As many of you regular forum members might know my wife and I lived in the Netherlands from August 2007 to October 2008. In the Netherlands, a very beautiful country filled with plenty of warm and friendly people, the issue of global warming is not open to discussion since with 60% of the population already living below sea level, they really can't afford a "wait and see" attitude.
Maybe global warming is only part of a normal planetary cycle and not caused by mankind's environmental abuses (sorry but regardless of one's place on the partisan fence, there are plenty of environmental abuses occurring around the world everyday) but I don't care, I like and honor the Dutch and therefore feel that issue of global warming needs to be addressed now and tackled head on.
An audio aside:
During my stay in the Netherlands I managed to attend a headphone meet sponsored by a Dutch audio dealer and run by the Netherlands chapter of HeadFi.org. The meet was held in the back room of the dealer's store and during the meet we got to check out the store. Because of the fact that just about everyone in the Netherlands lives in either an apartment or some type of attached home, i.e. townhouse, the speakers tend to be either bookshelf/monitor models or smallish (by US standards) floor standing models (by way of comparison my Vandersteen Model 3As were as big, if not bigger, than the largest speaker on display in the store). This is not to say that these speakers didn't sound good and besides which the electronics were of very high caliber. In addition, I finally got a chance to listen to a pair of Ultrasone Edition 9 headphones ($1500), which aside from the $3000+ Sony Qualia headphones I only heard one time, were about the best 'phones I have ever heard.
As many of you regular forum members might know my wife and I lived in the Netherlands from August 2007 to October 2008. In the Netherlands, a very beautiful country filled with plenty of warm and friendly people, the issue of global warming is not open to discussion since with 60% of the population already living below sea level, they really can't afford a "wait and see" attitude.
Maybe global warming is only part of a normal planetary cycle and not caused by mankind's environmental abuses (sorry but regardless of one's place on the partisan fence, there are plenty of environmental abuses occurring around the world everyday) but I don't care, I like and honor the Dutch and therefore feel that issue of global warming needs to be addressed now and tackled head on.
An audio aside:
During my stay in the Netherlands I managed to attend a headphone meet sponsored by a Dutch audio dealer and run by the Netherlands chapter of HeadFi.org. The meet was held in the back room of the dealer's store and during the meet we got to check out the store. Because of the fact that just about everyone in the Netherlands lives in either an apartment or some type of attached home, i.e. townhouse, the speakers tend to be either bookshelf/monitor models or smallish (by US standards) floor standing models (by way of comparison my Vandersteen Model 3As were as big, if not bigger, than the largest speaker on display in the store). This is not to say that these speakers didn't sound good and besides which the electronics were of very high caliber. In addition, I finally got a chance to listen to a pair of Ultrasone Edition 9 headphones ($1500), which aside from the $3000+ Sony Qualia headphones I only heard one time, were about the best 'phones I have ever heard.