Category: observation
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COVID confusion?
It’s been about COVID-19 for over a year now. On all media. TV and radio are becoming more and more difficult to tolerate. Today’s main topic in the Netherlands is when we will be free again and how it is possible that the UK, Denmark and Israel will go back to the old normal while…
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Fiction
The weather is fine now, but this morning it was snowing, I think with flakes already melting, they fell straight down, close together and quite quickly. A source of desperation. I have to do something, set the brain free. Find out something more about Ding Ling. Born in 1904, she belonged to the May 4th…
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The radio, Ding Ling, the Internet and Shen Congwen
Because radio provides a safe border crossing to the outside world in pandemic times, we often listen to it. That goes well until 9:30 in the morning with radio 1 news (Jurgen van den Berg, etc.), but it becomes a risk after that. For some time now we have regularly switched to BBC radio 4.…
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What kind of political knowledge is useful?
Yesterday I answered the question of how Rutte could have let the parliamentary drama of 1/2 April happen. Does that answer contain knowledge? And if so, is it useful to us? If political science is aimed at making useful political knowledge available, what is it? What kind of political knowledge is worth seeking from a…
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Caught by a white lie?
How to explain that a prime minister who has led governments for 10 years and, shortly after another resounding election victory finds himself back, in full view on national TV and after a 9-hour parliamentary massacre, with a censure motion that was supported wall-to-wall. Wall-to-wall here means: supported by all parties, except that of the…
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The first wave and beyond: China and the USA
For every jurisdiction, the first encounter with the COVID-19 virus has been a challenge of how to respond to a pandemic. It was China’s turn first. All things considered, I assume that in most places where there has been a first wave, it will have ended after the 26th week of the pandemic. (There are…
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Global Medical Ethics
It is of course an impossible task for a lawyer-programmer to independently make a sound design of the developments of a pandemic in four different cultures. But such is not necessary for making a beginning. For a first estimation I use literature and Wikipedia mixed with personal experience. David A. Cummiskey of Bates University has…
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Rythm Diversity
When I worked as a starting programmer at what was then called the Center for Data Analysis of the Social Faculty of the University of Utrecht in 1969, there were still no Internet and no search engines or Social Media at all. Collecting data was very time-consuming and cumbersome and required either access to archives…
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Looking for Method
An example: if I want to model how the influence of legal practice has evolved during the course of the pandemic in the Netherlands I can use a timeline to select relevant institutions for my toy world and to locate the moments when they take action, perhaps even exhibit adaptive behavior. In terms of method,…
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(1873) Friedrich Nietzsche and Truth (@proxytruth)
Perhaps the most important issue to be addressed by anyone wishing to supplement their knowledge with toy worlds is that of the method in which we can find a serious substitute for @realtruth. That is an issue that I have had on my mind for a long time and about which I (not at all…