RonMertens.com

I had my birthday a couple of days ago…

To celebrate, Michal took me to a ‘dinner and a show’. Or actually a movie and dinner. So we went to see Indiana Jones IV (secret of the crystal skull or something like that). Anyway it was a fun movie! Recommended (if you like that sort of thing, anyway). The dinner was great too.
Happy birthday to me

So we’re back from Jacob’s ladder festival! It was really great! I really like that country and Irish folk music, and there was some good shows in there.

It’s also cool that we know so many people there! This year Rani joined (I thought she deserves a mention - she’s one of the few who read this blog…).

We had a lot of fun! Can’t wait for next year…

Too long have I written “oled-tech” kinda news in my blog. So some personal matters now…

The big news obviously is that we (Michal?) are pregnant - we’re expecting a baby girl in 3 months! This is both exciting and scary and hopefully all will be well. What can I say more?

I decided it was time now to tell the world (or the part of it that reads this blog). Obviously if you read this blog you probably know me and so you heard this one already, so no point in me blabbering.
Other than that? We’re going tomorrow to a cool folk-music (Irish/British/County) festival (Jacob’s ladder) for 2 days which will be a hoot I hope! yee-ha!

So people always ask me - why are you a vegetarian? I have several reasons, so here they are, at no particular order:

• It’s healthy - there are some evidence that vegetarians live longer. It’s complicated to prove, because usually a vegetarian will lead a better lifestyle (eat better, doesn’t smoke…). But still.
• I don’t like killing animals, especially when it’s so easy to not do so
• Environment issues - it’s now argued that eating meat is a major cause of global warming. The amount of energy that has to be ‘invested’ in meat is a lot more than an equivalent vegetable based dish. Also people are cutting trees to make room for growing food for animals, and there are other reasons too.
• It annoys people
• It makes for an interesting life (especially combined with other funny food habits)
• When I’ll look back when I’m old, I think I’ll be happier a bit.

I think that’s it

I just finished reading a great book - Jennifer Government (by Max Barry). It’s a fun packed, er, book. The idea is that the US has gone totally capitalist - no taxes, government has almost no power, people use their company name as surname (John Nike) and the police needs to raise money before it can investigate a crime. And that’s just the beginning, it goes totally “whacky” as it evolves.

It’s funny, but also quite insightful - it’s great to read about an extreme situation like this.

Recommended!

R.

Check this out - the world’s first OLED lamp, and a beautiful design, too!

A few years ago Michal and I decided that we don’t want to have TV anymore - we disconnected from cable, and ever since we don’t get any TV. We do watch DVD movies and TV series still.
I had just finished reading a fascination book - ‘Four arguments for the elimination of TV’, by Jerry Mander. He claims that TV is so inherently bad, that we can only eliminate it - we cannot hope to reform it. It’s hard to summarize this book - the arguments are interesting and convincing - but it cannot be summarized into a sentence or two - which is exactly what TV tends to do to issues - and one of the things Jerry doesn’t like about it.

Anyway it’s a good read - if only for the health relating argument which is fascination. I never considered ‘light’ to be so interesting!

So, 2007 is finally behind us. Some people use calendars to know that, some people get it from the TV, and some wait for my yearly photo collection. So here it is. It’s really short - we haven’t done much traveling - guess we’re getting old!

My latest book was one of the most fascinating I ever read - Influence, Science & Practice by Robert Cialdini. It’s really recommended - he talks about the way people can be influenced to do things they didn’t wanna do - with lot’s of interesting research data and findings. It’s really funny and interesting and helpful.