Introducing myself

Hi there,

I would like to introduce myself and give any prospective reader an idea what one could expect on this blog.

I am a 44 year old male who grew up in Suriname, S.A. and living in the Netherlands since 1990. I am married and have 3 kids ranging from 11 to 17 (at the time of this writing). I am not a fast typer so my blogs will generally not be very long and often, but I think this is a wonderful medium to put ones mind to writing. Possibly that can be of value to someone. If it's not, all that is lost is my time doing that. But if it is, even in the slightest for just one person, that would make this blog very worthwile.

What can be expected here?

I am a recently deconverted atheist, so quite a few blogs will consider that topic. Related topics that may be touched are skepticism and pseudo-sciences in general, astronomy, evolution and molecular biology. Another passion is freedom in the digital environment (GNU/Linux, free software, opposition to software patents and the like). Those might also be subjects for blogs.

As a last note, I would explain the name of this blog space. According to astrologers, my "sun sign" is Aries - the Ram. Since astrology is the one pseudo-science that I considered junk before all others, I like piggybacking on it. Hamal is the name of the brightest star in Aries, it is therefore also referred to as "Alpha Arietes". To me, Aries is just a constellation, a grouping of a few stars that so happen to be radially close to one another as viewed from the earth, but which have absolutely nothing else in common. Hamal is just a yellow star (similar to our Sun) at a distance of 66 lightyears - i.e. appr 625 trillion km (or 390 trillion miles) and with that it's one of the closer stars. An object that far cannot possibly influence the personality of anyone. The "musings" reflect my awe and wonder for the vastness of the visible universe. It is so empty, yet so beautiful at night. Only if you start to get a grisp of the workings of the universe, without any need to invoke a supernatural entity, only then will the wonder of the universe really make a real impact and will the significance of our "pale blue dot" as it was once called by Carl Sagan, be put in the proper perspective. Using the word "musings" has been inspired by Ebon Musings which was a fundamental asset to my deconversion.

As a final note, if I make some glaring errors in either my spelling or grammar, I would appreciate being notified of this. English is not my native language.