have a coffee

At the end of March 2005, I presented a dissertation proposal to Prof. Dr. Cees van der Laan of the Vrije Universiteit (VU) at Amsterdam. In the course of events, this led to a meeting with Prof. van der Laan and Dr. Wessel Stoker on June 28, 2005 at Amsterdam, where my proposal was accepted without modifications. As of this date, I am officially a doctoral student under the guidance of two promoters.

Further information on this subject can be found on my dissertation site, where you can also read the text of my proposal.

... is for his remote control. Believe me, I'm living it: We've somehow misplaced ours and it's definitely an unhappy situation when you need to get up from your cosy sofa everytime you'd like to switch channels. No real zapping, this way.

A friend of ours just told us that our daughter Ann-Céline ranks first on google.be. I checked it out and found that it actually works on any google.tld (they use the same databases, of course) for the German or French languages.

Just this morning, I received an email which makes it look like doing my Ph.D. with the Vrije Universiteit could actually work out. Two professors (C. van der Laan, Pentecostalism; and W. Stoker, philosophy of religion) looked at it and called it "promising." Now I'm invited to Amsterdam some time during the last week of June and all I have to do is rearrange my schedule to make it work (Wow, that sound easy! :-)).

Politics is a hot issue in Germany right now: Besides the fact that our social welfare system is in dire need of reforms in order to guarantee its continued existence, our chancellor has just puzzled everybody by announcing the advancement of elections to parlament to September 2005. Now, not only are the parties scrambling to find programs to present to the electors, but also the people of Germany are at a loss as to what party could possibly solve the mess we have right now. One thing seems certain, however: The ruling social democrats won't be the ones to form the next government. And I won't be the one to mourn this fact, since I haven't been a great fan of theirs anyway.
In the midst of all of this, I re-read Psalm 72, a passionate prayer for the king and the wish, that it might be granted to him to rule the country with wisdom and efficiency.

Of course, this is Israel, where it is clear that the position of the king depends on his appointment by God himself. And you would certainly expect God to bless and support such a divinely instituted ruler.
But how about Germany? For the first time, I have been thinking about this psalm in relation to Paul's assertion in Romans 13: all worldy authorities ultimately derrive their position from God. And now I wonder, when was the last time that Christians (myself included) have prayed such a passionate plea for our own government -- even when we fundamentally dislike it?