Month: January 2020
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Friends and friendship
Last Updated on 2022-11-08 by Joop Beris Certain things about human relationships baffle me. One of those things is the fine art of making friends. I never seem to have gotten the hang of it. Sure, there were some people throughout my childhood and as a teen who I considered to be friends and I…
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The most powerful photo ever
Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris Every year, we take billions of photos of ourselves and our loved ones. Photos of landscapes, buildings, vehicles, animals or just random strangers. The vast majority of those photos are entirely unremarkable except perhaps to the person who took them. A precious few are so good, they qualify…
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Celibacy
Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris It would be funny if it weren’t for the many Roman Catholics who take this seriously. Apparently, retired Pope Benedict has gotten his panties in a twist over plans of his successor, Pope Francis to maybe relax the rules concerning priestly celibacy. So what exactly is going on?
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This smells like…
Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris Sometimes you hear about something and think to yourself “who in his right mind would want something like that?” So when I heard that Gwyneth Paltrow was selling a vagina scented candle, I half expected it to be a joke. As it turns out, it isn’t. They’re selling…
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Ransomware
Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris In case you lived under a rock the past few years: ransomware or cryptolockers are a form of digital extortion. A malicious program runs on your computer, searches for any and all data files it can find and encrypts them. Anywhere on the network where you have access,…
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Book review: Sapiens
Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris “Sapiens: A brief history of humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari has gotten mostly outstanding reviews. It’s also received praise from such well-known people as Barack Obama, the android Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. I just finished reading it and I agree with most people that it is a…