Google Earth

Remember Nasa World Wind? Forget it, once again the Google-tribe has torn a marvelous idea into pieces, only to ressurect a new and improved competitor. Google Earth let's you fly around the earth in a much more pleasent way that the NASA. I'm using it to build maps for my historical research, which is a lot of fun.
So go get it...

Mascq Debate

Last wednesday and thursday I participated at a Student Debate Tournament. The meaning of this assembly is all about showing each other your skills in debating, in other words: win arguments.
It was a learning experience as it also was a failure. Prior to the tournament I was pretty secure of my own debating skills. Unfortunatly I was wrong. My teammate, Arne Klarenberg is a skillful negotiator and we had no problem coming up with arguments. In the first debate we had to defend the statement that 'windmills are out'. We managed to ensure the audience it was clean, cheap, dynamic and the energy source of the future. We won this debate. In the next debate we managed to come up with 8 arguments for the destruction of The Hague. But our opponent convinced the jury with clever populism.

Then the finals were held in the Acadamy Building in Leiden, where we had to argue against the abolation of student society membership in the first year of the study. Again, our arguments lost to presentation and structure.

So....I have learned I am not a debater...oh well