-
Marvel’s Agent Carter Season 1
As you can imagine this series evolves around Peggy Carter which we met earlier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America : The First Avenger. In season 1 we follow Peggy Carter after the war as she struggles to be taken seriously as a secret agent by her male colleagues. Howard Stark is framed for selling secret weapons to the highest bidder and asks Peggy for help to prove his innocence. Without help from her colleagues and only assisted by Howard Stark’s butler Jarvis, Peggy sets out on a secret mission to discover the truth and prove Howard Stark…
-
Ter Helme 2021
Dit jaar de tweede covid editie van de vakantie in Ter Helme. Vorig jaar waren in juli de cijfers nog relatief ok, nu zitten we alweer in een stijgende lijn en is de delta variant stilaan de dominante. Het Europees kampioenschap voetbal zal het virus zeker deugd gedaan hebben maar daar heb ik nog geen data kunnen vinden op de site van het European Center for Disease Control (ecdc). Zaterdag 10 juli vetrekken we weer vrij laat na de gebruikelijke inpak perikelen. Merijn is gisteren al naar Katrijn vertrokken voor een ballonvaart en rijdt vandaag met haar en Arne mee…
-
Covid-19 vaccinatie
Deze voormiddag mijn tweede spuit met Pfizer vaccin gekregen. Temidden stijgende cijfers en de oprukkende delta variant zeker niet te vroeg. Joke heeft haar tweede spuit komende woensdag en vrijdag kan Hannelore voor de eerste gaan.
-
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling (ISBN 978-1408855898, Bloomsbury)
The first Harry Potter book, published in 1997. In 1999 the first 2 books were translated in Dutch. At that time more than 500000 had already been sold in the English speaking world of the first 2 books and film rights had been bought by Warner Bros. It was quite the hype in the UK and the books received positive ratings from children readers. But adults were reading the books as well. In fact, there were so many adult readers that an edition with an adult cover came out so that adults wouldn’t be embarrassed by reading a children’s book.…
-
Star Trek. The Motion Picture
I recently decided to watch the Star Trek movies again. I watched them very long ago and thought it would be a bit of ‘brainless’ fun to watch them all in a short period of time. What better time to do so than a typical dreary Belgian summer. The first movie of the series came out in 1979. It was a long time in the making after the original tv series ended in 1969. That was followed by 2 seasons of the animated series in 1973 and 1974. 5 years later the first movie came out. The original series didn’t…
-
Factfulness, Hans Rosling (ISBN 978-1473637498, Hodder & Stoughton)
This book was given to me by an uncle somewhere middle of 2019. As I have no shortage of books in the ‘want to read’ category I put in on the stack and left it there for some time. Then came some science oriented discussions about facts with our kids related to their homework assignments. So I decided to read it and see if it would also be useful for teenagers to read. And I must say I can recommend it to anyone trying to understand our world, not just teenagers. Especially in today’s environment where facts don’t seem to…
-
Swift Playgrounds
A year ago, at the beginning of the first lockdown we started with Swift playgrounds at home on the iPad to teach our 10 year old son Merijn a bit of coding. I had looked at it earlier but then it wasn’t available yet in Dutch. Last year it was and with a lot of time on his hands I figured it was a good time to introduce him to some basic coding concepts in a playful way. It hasn’t been a terrific success I must say. Sitting down and concentrating isn’t his favourite pastime. And although this first playground…
-
First Blood
The Rambo character recently became a news item in Belgium because of the renegade soldier Jurgen Conings. I wrote a short post about this as his supporters compare him to the hero Rambo. But in First blood Rambo is not yet the revenging hero from the later movies. When the movie came out in 1982 it stirred quite a controversy because of the violence. Compared to what has come since then the violence is quite mild but at the time I remember people found it quite shocking. And even now, watching the movie again the violence is disturbing in the…
-
Rambo Jurgen
In Belgium the news has been dominated the last couple of days by the search for a fugitive soldier named Jurgen Conings. He threatened to use violence against one of our most prominent and outspoken virologists, Marc Van Ranst. Marc was for a very long time a daily item in the news where he commented on the covid-19 situation and what to do. To many he is the personification of the lockdown and generally not liked much. Not surprising considering he has been constantly and relentlessly reminding us of the inconvenient truth that our own behaviour determines if the virus…
-
The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Forest, David Quammen (ISBN 978-0393350845, W. W. Norton)
Another book by David Quammen that is excerpted and adapted from his book Spillover. If you already read Spillover then this book might not bring much new. I read Spillover in 2015 in unsuspecting times and then this basically long chapter from that book on AIDS in the summer of 2020 in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic while on vacation in the south of France. Reading this in the middle of a pandemic obviously made it all more tangible. Compared to Ebola which acts fast and has a high mortality rate AIDS is a slow killer, infecting people without…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Response 418 