Subject:
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Re: Who James Isn't (was:Re: New Castle Sucks (so far...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Sun, 2 Jan 2000 07:34:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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1873 times
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Jasper Janssen wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Jan 2000 20:32:54 GMT, Mr L F Braun <braunli1@pilot.msu.edu>
> wrote:
> > Jasper Janssen wrote:
>
> > NORAD almost freaked at the triple Scud launch near Midnight, Moscow time, that
> > was taken as a nuke launch at first--turns out they were just sending some Happy
> > New Year missiles to Chechnya. :( Stupid gits. (Not Russians in general, just
> > whoever makes *those* boneheaded decisions.)
>
> What about the childrens' balloons from one of those "whose gets the
> farthest when the ticket is returned" which were detected as incoming
> nukes by the Russian aged and failing early-warning system a few
> months/years back?
I forgot about those! Imagine being the third-grader who started WWIII...
> > > Jasper (total fireworks among the 16 million inhabitants of .nl was ~6
> > > _kilo_tons.)
> >
> > Hey, you can afford it.
>
> Yup. Our $100 worth was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself.
> We'd bought a few _large_ ground-standing pots.
In Michigan, if it flies or explodes, it's illegal. Feh.
> > I'm upset that nobody here in the US covered the Amsterdam celebrations. They
> > went for Berlin, Rome, then Paris, and London. Have they forgotten that Dutch
> > investment pretty much controls the Western world?
>
> Even _I_'ve never heard, let alone made, that claim. We're only #12 or
> so on the list of countries ordered by GNP, IIRC, and maybe 5 or so
> when ordered by productivity (that one's quite a feat considering our
> pinko communist stance on welfare and institutionalised healthcare and
> all).
Counting national assets is pretty anachronistic. Most Dutch investment is highly
transnational--I don't think it shows up as "Dutch" for the purposes of GNP. I'll
have to dig out the citations, but I believe there's a huge Dutch interest in GE,
Citibank, and a few other huge US conglomerates--they're the largest single foreign
investment bloc in the US, above the British and far, far, *far* above the Japanese.
I mentioned Barings because it was the most visible recent sign of that ascendancy.
> > PS: I'll be joining you in August, at Uni Leiden. Nobody's shown me the secret
> > handshake yet, though. :)
>
> You want secret handshakes, join LSC (Leidsch Studenten Corps)
> (actually, they're called something else now, since they merged with
> the LVSV, leidse vrouwelijke studenten vereniging -- their female
> counterpart -- it escapes me what, though). They're the frattiest
> frat, so to speak. I believe the Leiden one is among the top-three,
> possibly even _the_, oldest student clubs in the country. And that
> means they're older than your _country_.
I'm not sure I'd want to do that. Besides, my Dutch is so bad, I wouldn't get very
far. :)
> Are you coming as an exchange student or as a teacher? What subject?
I'm a historian--I'm not teaching, but rather using Leiden as a base for my research
trips into Germany, the UK, and Amsterdam. I study Southern Africa, after all. :)
Technically I'm an exchange student, but I'm so far post-grad I'm almost faculty.
It's really quite weird.
> Anyway, mail me sometime, we'll set up a night at the appropriate pub.
Sounds good--I'll need to figure out what's good out there, because last summer I
didn't get into the pubs much (my girlfriend and I were living in a very nice 18th-C.
home on the canals and we chose to cook for ourselves).
What do you do there in .nl?
best,
Lindsay
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