Mariken
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Slug ethics
There’s a slug in my garden, or more likely, lots of them, eating my dahlia. Holes in every leaf, slimy tracks along the stem and not one single flower. I have this one single bulb, that I desperately want to grow into a bouquet of pompoms, but all my attempts and TLC are thwarted by…
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The power of the word ‘and’
Even though I am currently not working, I am musing. A reader’s letter in the Volkskrant regarding the alternative Remembrance of the Dead (Nationale Dodenherdenking, annually on 4 May) triggered this blog. In this letter the Volkskrant reader wrote: ‘[…] it feels as if the remembrance of the Holocaust and the extermination of Jewish life…
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Staakt!!! Staakt!!! Staakt!!!*
If nothing else, the Netherlands – or at least some well-trained Dutch athletes – excels at relays. During the 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships, held in Apeldoorn from 6-9 March, all 4 x 400 m relays were won by Dutch teams: women, men and mixed. That sure is inspiring and we academics never shy away…
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To blog or not to blog
‘The screw in the [moral] compass that allows the needle to move.’ That is the way I characterized academics, and legal historians in particular, in my contribution to a Liber Amicorum a few years ago. This was written when the UK had already voted to leave the EU, but had not yet left. Crimea was…
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Blue Monday Musings: the 21st century face of fascism
‘It’s an evolved, altered version of fascism’, Pablo del Hierro answered, when asked to what extent politicians like Trump and Wilders can be called fascists. It was a nuanced answer – goodness knows we don’t encounter many of those anymore when it comes to topics like this – with which I wholeheartedly agree. I would…