Author Archives: Jan Van Haver

Refugees: How much is too much?

8660040329_713baf637d_kIn 1956, over 200.000 Hungarians fled to Austria as refugees in a relatively short timespan, after the Soviets had ended the Hungarian Revolution manu militari. Unlike what you might expect from looking at the political climate in Austria today, a mere 60 years later, those refugees were treated so well that one of them openly stated: “If I am ever required to be a refugee, I hope to make it to Austria.” (source: The Bridge At Andau, a book published in 1957 by James A. Michener, based on interviews with some of those Hungarian refugees).  Continue reading

SteinRuhe

Not much activity on this blog lately… but for a perfectly good reason. I have been working on another website. And obviously I now also want to use this channel to promote it.

SteinRuhe is a wonderful place in Gerach, Germany (near Idar-Oberstein), where my wife and me will be renting out a few rooms. Do check out the website – you will notice it also contains a button for booking rooms, should you be interested in doing so.P1060319

Quote of the day #59

“Anybody who knows the past isn’t allowed to turn refugees away. Anybody who sees the present can’t turn them away. Anybody who thinks about the future will not turn them away.”

Mercedes-Benz boss Dieter Zetsche
Image by re:publica (https://www.flickr.com/photos/re-publica/)

Song of the day: Fatboy Slim – Song for Shelter

If you have less than half an hour to spend when you stumble upon this blogpost: bookmark it and come back when you do. The clip is over 11 minutes long and there’s a good chance that, if you take the time to watch it in full length, you will want to play it again. Not necessarily only to admire the young, almost naked bodies (of both girls and boys, so no one should feel left out) – this particular clip is a product of the content creation factory called Red Bull – as the music really has a kind of hypnotizing effect. If you don’t pick up that effect… it simply means you’ve not listened to it enough times.

fatboy_slim_-_halfway_between_the_gutter_and_the_starsTo enjoy Song for Shelter to the full extent, you should be familiar with the entire Fatboy Slim album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The album contains some well known hits, such as Sunset (Bird of Prey) and Weapon of Choice (with a wonderful official video featuring Christopher Walken) and features this Song for Shelter as the closing song, with the final part of the song repeating musical elements from earlier parts of the album.

Top 7 Podcasts

Audio content has one major advantage over video or written content: you can fully consume it while being engaged in another activity. Of course you can, say, also read a magazine while watching something on TV, but in that case it will be impossible to grasp the full details of both sources of content. Another example where watching video or reading is clearly not possible is in the car – if you are in the driver seat in this unfortunately still pre-Google-self-driving-car-for-commercial-use era. Listening to audio on the other hand is perfectly possible when you are behind the steering wheel.

That is probably why cars are usually equipped with some sort of audio device and why there are no regulations against consuming audio whilst driving. For a very long time Continue reading

Song of the day: St Germain – So Flute

If you would like to be called legendary, try this: release an album that out of the blue becomes a world wide success and then NOT publish another album for 15 years. That’s exactly what St Germain (stage name of the French musician Ludovic Navarre) has done: 15 years after the success of his album Tourist in 2000, he has released a new album – simply called St Germain – in October 2015, just a few weeks ago.

One of the absolute masterpieces on Tourist is no doubt So Flute.

Suggestions for a slightly better world #6

As you could read here before I’m not always a big fan of the British. But there is one thing I absolutely love about them: the way that behave on escalators. Especially if you contrast that to the way the rest of the world population (or at least the part I have already been exposed to) behaves on them.

Those of you who have been in the UK will no doubt already realize what I am l referring to: on escalators that are wide enough to allow Continue reading