Hoorn is a historic harbour town in North Holland, beside the Markermeer. It grew from a small settlement on the water and received city rights in 1357. Its old centre, harbour and former trading buildings still show how closely the town’s life was shaped by ships, fishing and international trade. My final postcards take us…
Spatchcock piri-piri butter chicken for the barbecue Ingredients Chicken Piri-piri butter sauce Method Ralf Note This is not a press-button-and-go-away chicken. You must stand there. Look, smell, turn, paint, turn, paint. A barbecue is a relationship.
Questions That Change Something What happens when somebody asks one more question? In Pineapple 23, the answer might be a new dance, a marriage, a boundary, a better wardrobe, a journey through somebody else’s ordinary life or a thousand words of carefully generated rubbish. It might also be a glowing portal behind the washing machine….
An Anti-Handbook for receiving instant answers without becoming an idiot. By Martin Imagine that the government creates an Emergency Question Department. Before citizens may ask anything, they must prove that they have already thought about it for at least thirty seconds. I believe this could improve society. Unfortunately, the longer queues would become the first…
I have always believed there is a line between being interested in another person and entering a part of their life that does not belong to you. Then I started dancing, met new people and discovered that sometimes curiosity opens a door rather than crosses a boundary. By Ismar When I was a child, my…
Why is the sky blue? What kind of car is that? Why do they look the same? Why can’t we live next to the school? Why do I have to do homework every day? What’s for dinner? Where are my shoes? The needle keeps scratching the same sentence. Only the needle isn’t scratching a vinyl…
Before sitting down with Bruce, I watched three of his recent AI presentations. Bruce had asked AI to write rubbish, reconsider what it means to be good and explore how human beings might survive the AI age. I came to our conversation with impressions from those three experiments. The questions did not remain separate for…
One question opened my kitchen. Twenty years later, my wife’s sport opened a world I never expected to love. By Ralf The First Question The first important question was not very romantic. “Are you the former husband of S—the man who can cook so well?” That was what my wife asked me when we first…
At 65, I am not sure that I will become a good dancer. But after spending a great deal of time alone, ballroom dancing has brought new people, movement and fun into my life. By Ismar My sixty-fifth birthday contained two surprises. At lunchtime, I went to a restaurant with my mother, my aunt and…
After years of asking what Brida is, who it is for and whether anybody might eventually pay for it, the Mayor has finally received a definitive answer. An obituary for a man who asked one question too many. The Mayor died today after a long and largely unsuccessful struggle with curiosity. The immediate cause of…
