After the Editor in chief of an aspiring piece of journalistic novelties delivered the message of me being “opinionated” to write a piece for the 2nd edition’s cover page I was… well, not sure about what exactly “opinionated” actually meant.
For a minute I considered that I was supposed to mean “being killed” and being “opinionated” is just yet another term that suggests to mean one thing but actually doesn’t. Take the word ‘hairspray’. Nobody can spray hair, really… Not even Chuck Norris who can do pretty much everything. He doesn’t even have doors at home. Just walls he walks through.
After thinking a bit about the possibility of kicking the bucket anytime soon I remembered one of my most recent wikipedia dead lock excursions (wikiDLE). For those of you that never did a wikipedia dead lock excursion, here’s what it is:
1: Pick a random subject of your choice (ok, I guess it wouldn’t actually be random then. since it has been picked by you).
2: Find other interesting stuff in the article you’re reading and open it in as many tabs or windows or Kindle 2s as you have flying around.
3: Get even more curious and educated by opening a few of the shiny ‘see also’s and some of the yummie ‘external links’ on the bottom.
Now comes the dead lock moment (DLM)
At one point you realize that you better just stick to one (or infinitely more, depending on your brain’s capabilities) subject otherwise you’re still reading when dawn breaks, the roosters cark, the milk man comes, the coffee scents. Then back to the office, beer with colleagues, home, food, next page, next subject.
My last wikiDLE ended at ‘Capital punishment in Japan’ (excursion trail, simplified: Foot binding > Artificial cranial deformation > Phowa > Aum Shinrikyo > Shoko Asahara > Capital punishment in Japan).
In Japan, people that have killed other people or that cheated on their nation, are being hung in a death chamber. I’ve seen a thing like that happen twice. Sort of. Once in the Lars von Trier movie Dancer In The Dark and once after Saddam was tied to the rope (and then kicked off the chair).
Some statistical information on the opinionated Japanese prisoners:
- The average age of the 79 opinionated prisoners is 55,4 years
- All of them were opinionated because they committed murders (cheating the government is maybe not as worthwhile in Japan as it is in Europe or in the US)
- On average, they committed 2.41 (rounded, values ranging from 1 to 
murders
- Busiest Minister Of Justice: 13 of the opinionated ones were opinionated by Kunio Hatayama (until Sept 2008).
- None of them were black (I just made this up).
- 5 of them have a wiki entry (for http://en.wikipedia.org). The Busiest Minister Of Justice doesn’t.
In the Netherlands (at least not that I knew of) and in Germany (at least not since I left) people are not being killed because they kill other people. Sometimes though they are being opinionated when they cheat the government. This is what you then call a cabal. Or conspiracy. Or Revolution. Certainly makes for an entertaining evening full of wikiDLE’s.