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Daddy Bye-Bye Cool

It’s different when it’s your own indeterminate, potato-shaped blob of white noise in a big grey wedge. The sonogram lady placed the transducer on my wife’s belly, and without further ado, our tiny baby-to-be sprung onto the screen. Two miniature legs were clearly visible, folded against the abdomen; and one of the two arms actually […]

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Pork Butchery Laying

You thought Chinglish is bad? Try Frenglish! There’s a restaurant in the heart of the French Ardèche region, established in the impressive bowels of a medieval castle, where the staff are hospitable, the wine flows freely, and every single dish is a blessing for your tongue. That is, if you actually manage to stop laughing […]

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Ultimate Democracy

Responding with outrage to the option offered to patients in a Haarlem hospital of paying money to move up in a surgery waiting list, a Dutch congress member expressed her view of the democracy of the health care system: The governing principle of our Health Care System is, after all, an equal level of health […]

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One Cell In The Sea

Some albums are as close to perfect as makes no difference. Springsteen’s Born to run comes to mind, with only the Night track to keep it from perfection; or Billy Joel’s Innocent Man. One Cell In The Sea, by the fairly unknown band A Fine Frenzy–really just a vehicle for Seattle-born redhead singer-songwriter Alison Sudol–has […]

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I Want To Ride My Bicycle

My wife and I made a 600-kilometer circuit of the central Netherlands by bicycle a few weeks back; during that wonderful trip, I’ve learned that riding a bicycle is one of the best ways to see a country up close.* The Dutch countryside, I’ve discovered, is so pretty it looks like a foreign country. Of […]

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The Armpits Of The World

There are places in the world where no one comes. Ever. I’m not thinking of remote areas of Antarctica or unclimbed summits in the Cordilleras de los Andes. Nor do I believe there are bits of jungle in deep, dark Ruanda that will never be seen by human eyes. No, I’m thinking of the armpits […]

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Emotional Geography

On its way to Leiden Lammenschans station, the slow train to Alphen passes a crossing. It’s a fairly unappealing place, where the ugly housing developments of northern Leiden crowd up to an uninspired business district and an empty lot. At first, therefore, it was hard to explain the rush of satisfaction I felt when I […]

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Tireless Driving

Last weekend, I drove to the tiny village of Jaulzy, France, for a four-day writing workshop with seven other english-language speculative fiction writers living in Europe. I’ll cover the workshop in another post. Here’s what happened when I tried to drive home on Tuesday.

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Alan Parsons Had It Wrong

We all know Microsoft is evil. Never mind the tons of brilliant software they produce; the mere fact that they’re as close to a monopoly on office software as makes no difference, proves their fundamental badness. And in their lovely little song “Nothing left to lose” (from the magnificent “Turn of a friendly card” album), […]

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I Do

Today is the day. A little over five hours from now, the city official will ask her ritual questions and both of us will confirm that we do. We’re both psyched and excited; it’s a little hard to grasp that after six months of preparations the day has finally arrived. All that’s left to do […]

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