It’s not uncommon to see “!?”, “???” or even “!?!?”. While not formally allowed, it’s still an easy way to express a question in surprise. But, hey, there is a better solution! Back in 1962 the typographist Martin Speckter got the brilliant(?) idea to superimpose an exclamation point on a question mark – and by that invented the interrobang! What‽ I’m already addicted to the interrobang :) If you don’t see it, it’s probably because the character unfortunately isn’t included in all fonts (why could that be?).
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
I’m quite tired about the use of culture and ethnicity as dividing factors between human groups. There are no such thing as «clash of civilizations» or «axes of evil». And it’s way too simple to use culture as an explanation for cruel acts. We are all human beings, and even though we get very different initial conditions for our lives, we are not that different when it all comes together. Avaaz has made a brillliant video and a petition for real middle east talks. Watch the video and sign the petition:
The universe is approximately 13.7 billion years, the earth 4.6 billion years, there are around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, at least 10^22 stars in the universe. Attraction forces between uncharged matter is weak. Well, not always. There are 6.4 billion humans on the earth. I’m deeply in love with one of them. A stunningly unique, beautiful one. أحبك is Arabic for “I love you”. We’re thinking about taking an intro-course together in this beautiful language at Al-Quds this summer :)
The blocking of Wikipedia in China seems to be history! Andrew Lih brings this good news for the chinese internet community. For long time, the Chinese government has been very hard on community-contributing or community-driven websites (“read-write-sites”). Beeing active in a local Amnesty-group some years ago, I remember we worked with a case where a young man was detained for several years without a sentence. The reason was his website. The main content on the site was not problematic, but he was held responsible for a comment, where a guest mentioned the 1989-massacre. In other words, including open comment-fields on your website in China is dangerous, and then, what about leaving the whole website open for editing by anyone (like Wikipedia)? Keeping that in mind, it will be interesting to see what is written about Chinese history in Chinese Wikipedia (well, at least it would be if I understood Chinese).
By the way.. Who would guess that the Chinese article about Henrik Ibsen is almost as long as the Norwegian one? And that Chinese Wikipedia includes a long article about my hometown Bergen? Wikipedia is truly fascinating.. :)
After a long summer holiday, which I mostly spent working at The Mediecentre, my thirst for new knowledge has again grown big – and starting to study therefore feels really good. This term I will be following courses in inorganic chemistry, chemical thermodynamics and basic mechanics. So far, especially inorganic chemistry appears to be in the middle of my sphere of interest. It starts with a basic look at orbital theory and the Schrödinger wave equation, which is really fascinating stuff. Also, the lecturer does research on Molecular Modelling, a topic that is a possible candidate for my Master thesis, which in itself is inspiring.
Do you think your own thoughts or do you blindly follow others?
General, dein Tank ist ein starker Wagen.
Er bricht einen Wald nieder und zermalmt hundert Menschen.
Aber er hat einen Fehler:
Er braucht einen Fahrer.
General, dein Bomberflugzeug ist stark.
Es fliegt schneller als ein Sturm und trägt mehr als ein Elefant.
Aber es hat einen Fehler:
Es braucht einen Monteur.
General, der Mensch ist sehr brauchbar.
Er kann fliegen und er kann töten.
Aber er hat einen Fehler:
Er kann denken.
- Bertolt Brecht
100 years ago the Wright brothers were granted a pantent for a flying machine – a patent that turned out to include almost every man-made vehicle that could fly. A few years earlier Guglielmo Marconi was granted a patent on radio waves. It’s needless to say how these patents obstructed further research and development. Regarding the airplane-patent, the US government made a short process in 1917, with the World War I underway. Marconi’s patent on radio waves was claimed invalid by the US Supreme Court in 1943.
Unfortunately we doesn’t seem to have learned much from the last century’s patent stupidities. Until recently, it was not possible to patent living organisms, which were regarded as discoveries of nature and therefore unpatentable. In 1980, however, this all changed. The US Supreme Cour ruled that a living organism, a bacterium that could digest oil, could be patented. Today we have lots of patens on life: on plants, animals, genes and smaller parts of DNA.
Patents on medicines is another sad story, causing the deaths of poor people each day. Those who defend pharmaceutical patents, argue that the research of new medicines is so expensive that the pharmaceutical companies need their patents to survive. The question to ask here is if patenting is the only way to raise money for medical research? Today it’s already the public sector that pays for the bulk of drugs used in Europe, thanks to various systems for universal medical coverage. So today it’s (at least in most European countries) already the government who pay for most of the medical research (by buying patented medicines). What if the government instead could fund the pharmaceutical research directly, with the clause that the results must be made freely available? This idea is promoted by the swedish Pirate Party.
People don’t go to war because it’s cute or fair. People go to war because of interests and passion. It’s not about moral. It’s about dehumanizing the enemy so you can look away from moral. Thousands of years of civilizing appears wasted when the worst insticts resting inside all of us are digged up.
I’ve seen a lot of war movies, mostly American. What I find strange is that none of them have made me puke. In fact many war movies don’t even leave a bad taste in your mouth. Most films show good soldiers fighting bad soldiers. Ultra-cool special soldiers take out their enemies with surgical precision. Few show what war really is.
Well, today I saw this film, Harrison’s Flowers, that at least cleaned my tearchannels. And it was not mainly because of extremely gruesome pictures, but because of the well-driven story. Instead of being put in the shoes of soldiers, we were photojournalists digging deeper and deeper into the Croatian War of Independence. It got worse and worse until we reached hell, Vukovar. A war without good guys or bad guys. Just alot of humans with the potenial for doing good and bad. We can make the most beautiful art and music – and we can be more evil than any animals. And still we are all born the same. Harrison’s Flowers show some aspects of human beeing..
Yes, we Norwegians are in many ways lucky. We don’t have the trauma from evilness coming from inside, like it did in Croatia or in Germany under World War II for that sake. This absurdness and surrealism have no place in Norwegian history. We so easily except human behaviour to be realistic. Therefore we so need movies like this to tell us the story about what human behaviour also can be like. We need it, not just to understand actions in other parts of the world, but also to spot the evilness inside ourself. Because also in Norway the evilness may come from inside sometimes, it’s just hidden so you don’t easily spot it: in everyday racism, child-beatening or other forms.
It’s been a time since I’ve discovered that leaving e-mail addresses on the web wasn’t such a good idea. In the past I’ve been playing a little around with TM4Bs SMS-API – and I’ve now found the ultimate solution to this problem! I’ve registered a free keyword, so if you want to send me a mail, you can instead send a sms starting with the keyword tm4b.dm to +447624809170 – and it arrives in my mailbox in seconds! Ah, wonderful technology :) You pay the normal fee of sending a sms to UK and it’s free for me. Come on – you can do it!
Well, the main purpose of TM4B is probably sending sms from the web, which is of course not free. Sending a sms to Norway costs 0.034 GBP, or around 0,4 NOK. Not overwhelming cheap, but not very bad either. The best part is, however, how easy it is to get it to work with your own site. Registering and buying credits took no time. The API is very well documented, so in a half hour or so I had written my very own web-based SMS engine, capable of sending group messages. I could choose my own sender name and get delivery reports back to my site. Amazing…
In need for great entertainment? Try the World Bank’s privatisation-song, made for promoting privatisation in Tanzania in 2001. Here’s my favourite part of the lyrics:
“Young plants need rain, businesses need investment. Our old industries are like dry crops and privatisation brings the rain. When the harvest comes, there is plenty for everyone.
Privatisation makes a team. The people are on the team, working in new jobs and buying shares in their own future. Investors are on the team, risking everything they own and betting that we can succeed. Government is on the team, the referee who keeps everything fair, the old man we can trust. ”
The full lyrics can be found here and a mp3-file here. There’s also a rap song We Need Money.
