The Jens Teislev Place

Here some thoughts on veganism as opposed to vegetarianism.

We obviously all agree that it is perfectly natural for all members of the animal specie (of which humans belong), to kill and eat other animals. I am sure we also agree that it is common for all members of the animal species to play and kill in a cruel manner (I needn’t remind either of you that most predators eat their prey alive and that your nice cats (who I love) can spend hours playing with a mouse and then leave it uneaten but dying). Finally I am sure that we all agree and are aware of that many animals are not build to live of fallen fruit only – their stomachs would collapse and they would die.

Shut up and eat your vegetables

This brings us to the next point. Apart from looking at our digestive system to determine if we are carnivorous, omnivorous or herbivorous; an easy way to determine that man was actually made as an omnivorous with exceptional predator skills are having a look at our face. Eyes pointing forward and sharp corner teeth being the main hints visible to the naked eye.

For those of you that call yourselves Christians, you should appreciate that even the prophet Jesus drank milk, and that animals according to the bible are lesser beings.

So the difference between veganism and vegetarianism is as I see it very crucial, and I would believe that many vegetarians would shy away from being classified with vegans.

A vegetarian does not eat/like meat. Some of them might eat eggs, fish and even chicken. They mostly start as vegetarians at a young age and are basing their dislike for meat in all sorts of things – sometimes respect for animal rights but most often that they think it is disgusting to eat cadavers. To be a vegetarian is a personal choice that I respect 100%.

A vegan (and here you must correct me if I am wrong) believes that humans and animals are equal. In fact he believes that animals are more pure beings than humans: he sees them in much the same way as the bible sees children – they are innocent.

Because of this he will not exploit or profit on then in any way. In fact he will not eat honey as it is stealing the labour of the bees, he will not drink milk because it is stealing fro the cows, he will not wear leather shoes as it for him would be the same as wearing shoes made of human skin. Furthermore he is against having horses draw carriages, riding them or in any way “use” an animal. Most of them however agrees that having a dog and a cute cat is perfectly acceptable – and just a proof that you are an animal lover.

Until this point I have just been rambling the facts, and I am sure that I have not and cannot have offended anyone, so I thank you for having taken the time to read this far.

Here is where I believe “the chain jumps off the crank” as we say in my part of the world:

Veganism is a political, indoctrinated, non-liberal, anti-human missionary city-dweller movement. It is clearly a “we-know-best” movement that is working against what is natural to elevate humans to a higher state of perceived moral. It is only practised by choice in the developed world and mainly in larger cities by people that have no knowledge or understanding of nature. People that Believe and have made their doctrine based on what they feel with their uneducated city-dweller hearts.

They do not say animals should be treated respectfully and live and die in a stress-free environment. They effectively say that animals should be left alone and that people should should live from what grows out of the earth. Their lack of understanding of nature, leads them to believe that a horse is being hurt if it is ridden, but that a purring cat is perfectly at ease lying in their lap watching tv. It is this very selective and misguided understanding of nature that scares me, and makes veganism a clear doctrine along with fanatic Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the other crack-pot ideas that man made up.

Veganism

I do not believe that an animal is equal in rights to a human. I do not believe that animals should be invited to vote in the next general election. Nor do I believe that an dog dislikes walking on a leash with its master, a cat dislikes lying on the lap of its mistress; and a horse loves pulling the carriage around the streets of Rome with his master Luigi de la Pata.

I believe that animals are our servants and property. I believe that we are legally and morally obliged to take care of them and make sure they have the best conditions under our care. It is that simple! If we want to eat jamon y queso (ham and cheese), we must make sure that the pigs had a good life and were not stressed and did not suffer in their slaughter. We must also make sure that the cow enjoyed her life and giving milk. In the same way we must make sure that our cat is happy and cared for; and that our dog is not spoiled and bored in our household.

What will be the next ism? Will it be people saying that we should not eat plants or fruits but only animals? The logic would be perfectly (un)sound and (in)sane here as well: why should us animals eat and prey on another “specie” (plants)? What have they ever done to hurt us? Obviously there is life force in a straw of corn as well…

Pirate Bay

Sagen om thepiratebay.com drejer sig om flere ting

1) Er det okay at piratkopiere musik og film?
2) Skal der være uhindret frihed på internettet?
3) Skal vi acceptere de priser som mediebranchen sætter?

Til det første punkt er der både argumenter for og imod. Argumenterne mod at det skal være tilladt at piratkopiere en film eller musik er baseret på helligholdelsen af den såkaldte “intellectual property right”. Denne fine tankegang er blevet perverteret i MEGET høj grad i vores samfund.

Mennesket er et produkt af samfundet. Mennesket lever ikke for sig selv, men lever for at gøre godt i HELE samfundet. Hvis et menneske opfinder eller producerer noget skal det komme samfundet til gode. Det er ikke rimeligt at copyright og property right tanker forhindrer andre mennesker i at nyde af det værk der er produceret.

Om det drejer sig om opfindelsen af penicilin, et dataprogram der tjekker stavefelj, en voldsfilm eller noget helt fjerde, har opfinderen retten til at modtage ros og anerkendelse for sin skabelse. Han har også ret til at sælge denne opfindelse. Han har derimod ikke ret til at holde sin opfindelse for sig selv ved at sætte en urealistisk høj pris, der blot sørger for at han kan have “et lag guld mere på sit køkkengulv”. Hans arbejde er hverken hårdere eller vigtigere end det arbejde en læge udfører når han tager en blindtarm ud, det arbejde en pilot udfører når han lander et fly sikkert (på vandet) eller det arbejde en vejarbejder udfører når han lægger grus på en vej. Det er blot mere GLAMOURØST, men arbejdet bør bære fortjensten i sig selv.

Hvad angår næste spørgsmål om “det frie internet”, mener jeg det er en utrolig farlig glidebane vi er på vej ind på når vi begynder at lade staten og private firmaer kontrollerer internettet. Internettet er en forlængelse af vore tanker, og en måde hvorpå vi frit kan interagere. Der er i min verden INGEN tvivl om at det skal være fuldstændigt frit at interagere som man vil, og at der ikke findes tanker eller information der skal forbydes.

Jeg vil hellere risikere at se børnepornografi, mennesker der får skåret halsen over i Tjetjenien eller en reklame for DNSB – end jeg vil have staten og multinationale selskaber til at overvåge min trafik. Jeg er åndeligt et frit menneske og jeg vil IKKE forhindres i mit udtryk eller indtryk!

Hvad angår det sidste økonomiske punkt, er der ingen tvivl om at vi i lang tid har levet under det åg der hedder GRÅDIGHED. Det er grådighed når Microsoft sætter en pris på 3000 kroner for et operativ system der funktionelt er dårligere end fx Linux Ubuntu. Det er en grådighed som de kun kan tillade sig en kort tid endnu! Det er også grådighed når TimeWarner tror de skal tjene milliarder af kroner på at sælge kopier af en film til 300 kroner stykket, når realprisen (inkluderet den afsindigt høje løn som skuespillerne og de grafiske designere tager) måske ligger omkring 30 kroner stykket. Selvom jeg absolut ikke er et religiøst menneske eller kristen, er der ingen tvivl om at GRÅDIGHED er af de mindre sympatiske egenskaber som mennesket har tilegnet sig. Grådighed er ikke konstruktivt og leder i sidste ende til en følelse af ikke at være god nok samt depression.

Jeg mener det er vores allesammen – dvs. samfundets og statens opgave – at hjælpe disse stakkels mennesker og organisationer ud af deres depression og kurrere deres grådighed.

Are you Spanish thinking you have problems with Telefonica? Well at least you speak Spanish. You should try to be a guiri. They will hang up on you 50% of the times you call, 25% of the times they will accidentally disconnect you or transfer you to a person that speaks neither Spanish nor English. I mean – I suspect they have a button that says “Annoying Foreigner” and which brings you to a person that ONLY speaks Dutch or Arabic!!

The remaining 25% where you are actually able to get through to Telefonica you will be met by a person that is the personification of supreme power. A person that commands respect that not even Franco or the King himself. What they say will be LAW and any suggestion you might have will be met with a negation.

On the other hand you have to just bend over and take it up the a..; cause there is NO REAL competition. If you should have the nerve to go for a competitor like YA.com, Orange or Tele2 – they will either make sure that the connection is not going to work or they will simply make an anonymous

call to your new operator and tell them that you have decided to switch to Telefonica. That will effectively cancel your service for a minimum of 14 days – unless of course you should decide to go with Telefonica.

Finally the price you are given by Telefonica when they sell or advertise is not the same as what you end up paying. The first months you will surely get bills that just plainly do not make sense (either VERY high or in negative). This is to make you confused. Then after 6 months your bill will flatten out on “what they feel like charging”. I pay 90 euros per month for TRIO. I have a client that pays 40 euros per month for DUO, one that pays 60 euros for DUO and one that pays 80 euros for DUO.

Telefonica is an embarrassment to Spain! Si, España es diferente!

Background

After a successfull install of Ubuntu on my girlfriends Dell 1300 Inspiron, I took the big leap and decided to install this Linux distribution on my own 2 year-old notebook.

Preparations

Taking the step from Windows to Linux is a big step. I have been preparing myself for this the last year, by using open source software where-ever I could. The Mozilla solutions Firefox and Thunderbird took over the role of Internet Explorer and Outlook, Open Office took over the role of Microsoft Office and I ported my static websites to Joomla!’s open source content management system.

Then as my Windows Vista installation started to go sour (my experience with Windows is that it has to be re-installed every year) I took the leap Friday the 13th of March 2009.

Crash and burn

While I obviously do not expect the reader to be as stupid as myself, I feel obliged to let you know what an insanely dumb thing I did when I started the process of installing Ubuntu on my notebook.

As my Pioneer DVD/CD burner is having some severe problems reading burned media, I had to download Ubuntu and install it as a slave to the Windows system using WUPI. That worked fine and as I could see that the LVPM program would be able to move the partition from the NTFS folder under Windows to a separate partition; this did not worry me too much. Having tested that all seemed to work in my slave version of Ubuntu I decided to set it free and move it over to another partition.

Now I had of course checked my NAS via USB to see that I had access to this before I did anything, and that worked fine (Targa NAS from Lidl!). As I started LVPM i made 2 mistakes. Firstly I forgot to create the partition under Vista as had been advised. Secondly I forgot to click the off button on my NAS. Never having seen a Linux filesystem I had no idea what sda and sdb was, and since the control box reminded me that sda was my current root and that I shouldn’t install there, I of course chose sdb. Next screen showed “Formatting” and I leaned happily back in my chair. Leaning back I realized that the NAS was flashing quite unexpectedly and making sounds. I wriggled my eyebrows, opened my mouth and uttered “SShiitt!!” Then I quickly killed the power to the NAS.

The result of this idiotic procedure was that my NAS (which held all files from the last 15 years) was seriously messed up. Being a real computer nerd, I of course had no back ups of ANYTHING, so I was looking at having lost around 300 GB of data – pictures, papers, customer information and accounts! However after a few days of extreme panic I managed to find a brilliant program that only cost me 55 euros, and which solved all my problems. Let me advise you that www.recovermyfiles.com has a very good product!!

Anyway back to the installation.

Installation

After having ported Ubuntu to it’s own partition and having Vista on it’s own with a dual boot through GRUB I was ready to enjoy the spoils. However GRUB crashed on start and was unable to boot my newly moved partition for Ubuntu – Error 15. I searched through the papers, and in the end fuond the information I needed just on the screen. The partition location that GRUB was trying to mount had not changed and was still listed as an NTFS folder under Vista. I changed this to the simple (hd0,1) and (hd0,0) for the Vista system. Then when I entered the system I edited the menu.list file through Terminal and forced these changes to remain.

What works and what doesn’t?

I was surprised to see how much worked on my system. Here follows a list of peripherials etc:

64-BIT Dual processor: Working out of the box!
Integrated webcam: Working out of the box!
Wireless network (not Broadcom): Working out of the box, but seems to be given a problem causing the notebook to freeze and Caps-Lock to flash. Solved with fix found on Ubuntu website.
Fingerprint reader: Not reacting. Might need some software installed. But after having seen Mythbusters on Discovery I have no need for it!!
Nvidia: Functions perfect, but you need to install free/gratis proprietary software to get the monitor to work perfectly.
Blue quick-play buttons: Seems to be working, but the sound mute button does not turn orange when the sound is off..

Sony Ericsson K800i: So far not managed to sync. contacts and calendar. However it plugs in perfectly via bluetooth and lets me browse files on the phone and on the memory card!
HP Officejet 6110: Works out of the box – INCLUDING the scanner.

Conclusion

All together the installation has been a tremendous success. The only real thing that might have caused a problem is the fact that I chose to install the 64 BIT version and not the standard 32 BIT version. A lot of the programs that otherwise should work out of the box (f.i. Java, Skype, Google provider, etc) have taken some extra tweaking to work on the 64 BIT version. Apparantly there is not that much to gain by having a 64 BIT version installed, so if you are not a mega nerd or even a junior nerd; you might want to consider taking the 32 BIT version instead.

Otherwise I am now a very happy Linux user with a brilliant operating system!

Beauty!!

While a lot of changes are taking place in my personal life, nothing is really meant to seep through to the unregulated masses.

Have a nice New Year when you get so far..