Site Columns
By ChristianMay 14, 2000 - 3:40 PM
[Update, Sunday night:] Unfortunately, due to a variety of circumstances, I haven't been able to update the site today - regular updates will resume tomorrow again, of course. My apologies for this.
Hello World!
Yahoo! Full Coverage: Dutch Fireworks Blast
It are things like this that make you realise just how easy disaster can strike. One minute you're watching the Eurovision Songfestival, the other minute the television broadcast switches over to a news report about the worst disaster here in the Netherlands since an El Al Boeing crashed into Amsterdam years ago.
Watching the reports on television, this really looks immensely shocking - all the houses in an area of several hundred meters from the firework factory where the explosion occurred were completely destroyed, cars were reduced to burning frames, and with the rubble it looks more like a city in Kosovo than in the Netherlands. Thank God the current death count is just 14 people (which of course is also already immensely horrible), but considering 2500 people live in that neighbourhood I fear that number might still rise.
But when looking at the news reports, the most shocking thing is really that the people hit by the explosions are people just like you and me - it was a regular neighbourhood, where people were just going about their business, when suddenly their entire house was blown away. And some of the people who felt the first explosion went out in the streets in the direction of the factory to see what had happened, only to be hit by a second explosion a while later. Of many of these people, their entire lives have just been completely destroyed.
I'm really at a loss to say more about this - it's been a long while since I've been this shocked by something on the news. I guess when disasters happen nearby it'll always effect you more than if it's just on the other side of the globe - for me, such catastrophes simply did not happen here in the quiet, peaceful Netherlands. It seems I was very wrong about that.
Trek BBS Today
Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:
-What was Insurrection's Stardate?
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Today On TV
-In the United States, the Sci-Fi Channel will be showing the Original Series episode 'The Galileo Seven' at 11:00am Eastern Time.
-In Canada, Space! will be showing the Original Series' 'Is There In Truth No Beauty?' at 10:00am Eastern Time.
-In the United Kingdom, Sky One will be showing DS9's 'Homefront' at 16:00 GMT, followed an hour later by Voyager's 'Displaced'. At 18:45, BBC Two will be showing Voyager's 'Gravity'. Thanks go out to Kathryn Hughes for this!
-Here in The Netherlands, RTL 5 will be showing DS9's 'Things Past'at 17:55 CET. Thanks go out to StarTrek.nl for this!
Poll Results
Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:
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47% - (283
Votes)Thanks for participating, and please also take part in our new poll, asking if you're planning on seeing 'Battlefield Earth'. Practically all the banners shown here over the past few days have been advertising the Travolta film, so you should at least know about it, but apparently it's also an astonishingly bad film. It'll be interesting to see how many of you will actually go and see it, though.
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