Filocafé

Yesterday I went to a Filocafé for the second time, an afternoon in a pub where people come together to philosophize. The first 15 minutes a topic is chosen at every table, after which everyone can vote on the topics. Then it starts, evryone can add his thoughts about the topic, by telling it to the microphone.

The first time I went the chosen topic was 'Can we live without illusions?' and gave rise to a good discussion. This time the topic was 'How to cope with getting older?', which wasn't so philosophical in my opinion, and it didn't lead to such a good discussion. People just kept mentioning advantages of getting older, like experience and being able to take little problems not so seriously.

So a lot depends on the chosen topic, and also the people that join the discussion. Still it is nice to be in a pub in a whole different setting, and observe what people think.

I've got a 20 inch flat panel!

This weekend I bought a 20 inch flat panel. After working on a 15 inch CRT monitor, this takes some getting used to. And to say I thought about buying a 22 inch (from an unknown brand, about the same price), that would have been a shocking transition to me. I think 20 inch should be enough for almost everyone.


When I compared the specifications of different monitors, I wondered how important the brightness could be. Well, it turns out it isn't important at all. Mine has 300 cd/m², but after an hour I turned the brightness down to 50%, and later even to 35%, because it was just too bright.

Biofuel good after all?

Biofuel has been heavily criticized for taking up agriculture places, where food used to be grown, and so leading to higher prices for food. It also would cause deforestation.

But a report in the news shed a different light. Scientists are working hard to get biofuel out of agricultural waste, and are making good progress. Therefore it seems that biofuel competing with food is just temporary; once we can make biofuel from agricultural waste, food prices would go back to normal.

Beck and Will Smith in Scientology

I just read that Beck, the American singer, is a member of Scientology. Gee, this is a guy that I found so alternative, cool, smart, this is one of the last persons I expected to join a creepy cult like Scientology. In my music collection he seemed one of the cooler artists, unlike my favourite Prince, who I'll admit is quite weird.

I also read recently that Will Smith gave cards for a free interview from Scientology to people at a filmset. So he is in it as well, although in his case I'm less surprised, I always found him a little weird.

Monitoring employees

I just read an article about a Microsoft patent to monitor employees in different ways, like heartbeat, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure. This would allow superiors to determine how effective employees work.

I can imagine a demo of such a system:

Let me show you our system in action. Here we see Joes heartbeat go up, hmm, how come, oh, the system also notices that Jane just passed by his desk, and the system noticed that this has happened before. This is useful information, because we now know that we never should put Joe and Jane on the same project. And maybe move one of them to another department.

Number of religious people rising

This weekend I heard on TV that the number of religious people is rising. This surprised me somewhat, although the last I heard about it was over ten years ago, that it was decreasing. It proves that historic trends tend to be cyclic; if you see it going in one direction, that doesn't mean it will keep going in that direction - l'histoire se repète. Being an atheist myself, I feel a little sad, although I respect peoples choices in religion, expecting they respect me for being an atheist.

Here in Belgium it seems that the number of religious people is still decreasing, judging by reports stating that the number of people going to church is decreasing. But people seem to adopt other religions, so that may be no indication either.

It also said that different catholic religions in Europe are clinging together, because of the increasing number of muslim immigrants. I hope this doesn't lead to crusades :-)

Oh well, if they really want a religion, can't they just choose Buddhism, that is very peaceful and would not go to war just because of religion. Than I would have a lot less to worry about. Oh wait, Buddhism is not considered a real religion. Too bad.

Still playing poker

Yesterday I played poker for the fifth time (we do it about every two weeks). I gained some money twice, and lost some three times, with a net loss. Well, it's fun, we talk a lot while we play.

It also seems that luck is important. A guy that wins big one time, may lose money the next time.