political

I blogged about putting my sons in a catholic school earlier today (http://nocturn.vsbnet.be/content/defeated).

They funny thing is that I received a response:

"So, to solve your issue with how racism was handled at your previous school, you go to a fairly monolithic catholic school. Certainly theologically monolithic, and I'm guessing largely racially monolithic as well. That move sounds racist to me... eliminate all other diversities around your child."

Yesterday, I made a very mixed decision of enrolling my two sons in a katholic school.  I hope this will be a good school for them and I really think it will be.

But today, I can't shake this feeling of defeat.  It's his 4th school and he's only 5, we always kept the catholic schools from the list of options because I strongly feel that religion in schools violates our freedom of religion.  But too many things went wrong in these public schools and there were several racist incidents which weren't dealt with in any meaningful way.

Yesterday, I made a very mixed decision of enrolling my two sons in a katholic school.  I hope this will be a good school for them and I really think it will be.
But today, I can't shake this feeling of defeat.  It's his 4th school and he's only 5, we always kept the catholic schools from the list of options because I strongly feel that religion in schools violates our freedom of religion.  But too many things went wrong in these public schools and there were several racist incidents which weren't dealt with in any meaningful way.

This post is not related to technology in any form, but I feel so stong about this issue that I'm sending this out into the world anyway.

In recent days, the Flemish public schooling system voted for a ban on headscarves, much to the anger of the Muslim community.

The elections are now part of history and I can't say I'm happy with the results.  Those of you that read this blog know that I'm firmly on the left side of the political spectrum, so this right turn is not something I like.

It's no surprise though, some guys in the Walloon camp played right into the hand of parties like the N-VA (like Reyneders saying that there too many Flemish people in the Brussels government...) and SPa screwed up so badly in the last decade that it's almost amazing that any leftist person would still vote for them.

Sjeez, I received a spam mail today to get me to vote for an OpenVLD candidate!

Fellow blogger, Bruno Lowagie, posted some items on how the (Belgian) government could (or should) compensate FOSS developers for the products they create, a lot of which are being actively used by the government themselves.

According to this billboard which advises people how to recognize terrorists, I qualify as one because people carrying two cell phones are really suspect as one can be a detonator for a bomb!

I always carry two cellphones, one is for work, the other is private. I would actually need a third if I would want to detonate any explosives and a real terrorist could actually just use his one cellphone to trigger the bomb?

This weekend, we in Europe made the transition to Summer Time (DST) again.

This change always means at least a week of adjusting for my family and each year I'm left wondering what the current benefits of this scheme are.

The hour of daylight you supposedly save can also be 'saved' by simply adjusting your habits during the spring and summer (starting work an hour early and leaving an hour early, goint to bed later, ..).

After a recent campaign to promote nuclear energy by the nuclear forum and now reading an article about nuclear waste in a German salt mine leaking into the surroundings, I want to write a little something about nuclear energy.

I'm not getting into the debate about pro- or contra this technology, but as we use nuclear power today, the economics of that form of energy are being distorted in favour of the producing company (Electrabel).