D-Day

On Thursday February 12th, the world celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. Or at least the world had that option.

I have been getting off at the same metro station for the past half year. And yet, on that day, I saw something new: people handing out a magazine called "Vågn op" (in Egnlish: "Wake up"). They are Christians. With a capital "C".

Now, my question is this: was that a coincidence? Did they just happen to be at that station at that point? Or was it the birthday of Charles Darwin that made them want to push their point?

2009 is also the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species. So naturally, the whole issue of science versus religion is taken out for a spin. The scary thing is, that so many seem to doubt or reject evolution.

In a recent article (The Economist, February 7th 2009, "Unfinished Business"), a figure was showing the 2006 figures on public acceptance of evolution. My country, Denmark, held second place (only surpassed marginally by Iceland) with more than 80 percent accepting evolution. The rest either doubted or rejcted it. The Netherlands, usually seen as progressive and enlightened, hovered around 60-65 percent. Of course, most people will notice the bottom two (Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africe wasn't included) were: the US (35-40 percent) and Turkey (25 percent).

But after 150 years, the scary thing is, that any country can have any true rejection left.

I could have hoped for a better birthday gift for old Charles. If anyone wants me, I'll be at the anniversary exhibit on evolution:

(Museum of Zoology)

Writing on the Wall

We are in the middle of a financial crisis. I know so because it's in the paper every single day.

Some people say we should help ensure liquidity for the banks. Others that the banks are hording the liquidity and that "we" (a euphemism for "the government") should lend directly to individuals and companies. Others again seem to think we should give the money to public works though in Denmark, the fear-induced economic slow-down has hit the retail sector more than it did construction.

I say they all got it wrong!

The first thing we do is remove the advertisements by the companies that already went belly-up.

The picture in this blog entry is from Copenhagen airport where all the luggage trolleys still have Sterling Airlines ads on the back. Sterling was based in Denmark but had an Icelandic owner. They filed for bankruptcy on November 29th.

And yet, 45 days later, they still ask us if we think about our next flight. I am sure some people are. Like the ones who bought tickets only to be told hours later that there was no arline anymore. I wonder what exactly they are thinking (the ad doesn't tell us).

Or another Icelandic company, Glitnir bank, which has a big poster, also in Copenhagen airport. A school of fish is together showing the sign for infinity, and the text reads: "Is nature trying to tell you something?". It might be telling us to remove the poster.

When the posters and the ads are gone, then we can talk about how to move on. Right now, the Icelandic relics are taunting us.

Too Little, Too Much

The European Union works based on a few simple principles. One of them is, that they do what they do because they it makes sense to do it on a European scale rather than leave it to the national governments. The official term is subsidiarity.
Let us look at a current example: the European Union wants to give each child between the ages of 6 and 10 one piece of fruit every week. The hope is that the project will help combat obesity.

Tell me this: is this project too much, too little or both? Personally, I think it's both!

One piece of fruit per week doesn't change anything. From the perspective of general health, it is underfunded an unambitious to the point of being ridiculous.

One the issue of European necessity, I am still unable to see how doing this on a European scale serves a purpose. Each country should decide this sort of issue themselves.

So what are we left with? Well, as usual just another piece of bureaucracy without effect, without mandate and without a shred of common sense.

Next year, we'll be voting for new EU parliament members. With our luck, not a single candidate will see a flaw in this wonderfully pointless initiative.

Helping Kesi

I just recieved an envelope stating that I have now adopted Kesi. I am not the only one who have done so, but together, we help Kesi and all of her friends.

So who is Kesi, you ask? She is a 3 (and a half) year old orangutan, living at the rehabilitation centre in Nyaru Menteng on Borneo in Indonesia. Today it is the home of almost 500 orphaned orangutans and 150 employees.





Kesi's story is a sad one, but with what seems to be a happy ending: in 2005, the centre found the then three months old orang-utan (except for one hand, which had been cut off when humans killed her mother). At first, she had trouble keeping up with the other orang-utans at the centre but she kept trying and today, she has learnt to climb as well as the others.

Signing up for this programme was the result of my search for a charity to support. That has been hard work, because many charities tend to politicize everything. Which is fine, except many of them tend to choose a rather anti-capitalist stance. I may not be ultra-liberal, but I do like to think that the search for profit tend to work. With this choice, I have agreed to support Kesi until one day, she may be ready to be set free. Until then, I have found my kind of charity.

If you want to read more about the effort to save orang-utans, I can recommend this website: http://savetheorangutan.org/

PS: Yes, I too can see the irony of writing a blog entry about the future of this site and then not write anything for more than 10 months. But now I am back.

10 years online!

Today is a bit of a milestone for this website. It is officially 10 years old. The very first version wouldn’t impress many today, but at that point, it was pretty decent for someone who had no formal training in web programming. If you would like to find out for yourself, go on and have a look at the site as it looked then.

The software behind the site has changed several times, as have the ambition level and the design. But I think my aim behind the site is the same as always. I created the site out of fun and I still keep it for fun. Back then, I didn’t have much content. In fact, the site was predominantly a set of links to other sites. With time, I added more and more jokes, but back then – with nothing but static pages – I eventually had to give up. It was too difficult to update.

I don’t have any jokes on the site anymore. The primary content is in this blog and in my photo album. And here, the world has changed dramatically. The blog may be on my site, but the actual page creation is courtesy of Blogger and the photo album is created by JAlbum. I put in the raw photos and raw text. The software makes it presentable.

In the last few years, the internet has taken a dramatic turn. It is no longer the domain for programmers and other variations of geeks. Instead, the geeks have made software that allows other (more normal) people to use the web. They use the social aspect without worrying about the technology. My friend Matthew is a guru in this field, and he can take a fair bit of credit for me having a blog… and for finally adding the comment field. To many today, that is a just a fact of life. For me, it was a bit of a challenge. I had to accept that people other than myself could write comments that would appear on my site.

Like I said at the beginning, this page was created and is kept alive because I find it amusing, not because I really use it as a tool. But maybe that will change.

I have had fun with my baby website this past decade. Perhaps I will soon have to take the biggest step yet. Not one of technology, not one of design, but one of intent. Perhaps it is time for this site to be a real tool for communication and sharing of ideas rather than my personal playground. What do you think?

Election Small Talk

Less than a week ago, the Prime Minister used his right to call for national elections. Those who know me can testify to me being an election news junkie. I stayed up half the night last year to follow the US midterm elections, and was an avid reader of articles regarding the election in France earlier this year.

This year, there is a small difference to the experience from earlier elections: this year, I am a member of a political party. On Saturday, I was walking around in central Copenhagen, getting a feel for the first parts of the campaigns. I ended up at city hall square where 60 or so young people were lying on the ground, while their friends walked around trying to get us outraged at what takes place in Iraq. It should be noted, these were youth activists from the unity list – an assortment of former communists, extreme socialists and the like. Like all other parties, some of them are nice people, other are less so.

When revealing my party membership, the young man immediately wanted me to see myself as personally responsible for the death of over 200,000 Iraqis. Failing to agree with him, we entered into a small discussion which started from a low point because he was unhappy that I in return wanted him to take personal responsibility for all the deaths under Stalin.

I then tried to seize the opportunity for agreement when he stated that the problem in Iraq wasn’t that we had freed the country from an evil dictator, but the management of the effort thereafter. I asked him if that meant that he in principle agreed with going into Iraq, to which he immediately agreed – and then looked perplexed. Obviously, he didn’t agree with me but had been caught up in a rather convoluted argument which suddenly left him unhappy.

I left him as he decided that he would rather discuss other issues which I suspected would be as fruitful as debating against handguns in the NRA.

I wish that politics could be about compromises rather than incriminations.

[Sigh]

Some Saturdays are made for relaxing during the evening, with nothing more exciting than good food and perhaps a movie. Last night was that kind.

We had planned to have homemade pizza, and would have accomplished this, if it had not been for a lack of yeast. In a moment of panic, I suggested McDonald’s which in the past has served us well as a backup-provider of food on days where fun and relaxation is key.

McDonald’s is – as most people know – a global corporation with thousands of franchises worldwide. They aim at serving a few different products in large quantities, with very few variations and definitely not with any kind of experimentation. They do it –and they claim that they do this well. Yet, our meal was the poster-scenario on what not to do. To summarize: the cheddar cheese dip was alright. Not great, but alright.
Things went wrong before we even got to the food, because the young lad serving our food mixed up the Coke and the Coke Zero. Those of you, who prefer Coke, can imagine the horror as I tasted the horrible artificial sweetener. Yes, I had the Coke Zero.
We quickly notice that fries were cooked in old oil and were soggy. But the burgers were (if possible) the worst. Mine suffered from having been fried for too long and then left to linger for even longer. By the time I got to it, all pretence of taste had evaporated. My wife’s burger had however been the victim of wrong sauces, and possibly something not at all intended for burgers. The bitterness made it all but inedible and we were ready to give up. The hot chilli sauce had started to part into oily water and additives respectively. As I said, the cheddar cheese dip was alright. Not great, but alright. Everything else was a failure.

On our way home, we bought a soda each, to clear away the taste of misery. Alas, mine was dead. That cannot be said for the mould growing on the sausages that had been meant for the pizza, but was now going in as part of a simple pasta dish. So finally, after giving up on pizza, a soda and part of the ingredients from our second backup meal, we could sit down and enjoy pasta with tomato sauce.

To top of my day, the cold that has been lingering for a while decided that now was a good time to break out, and the rest of the weekend has been spent on recuperating so I can go to work tomorrow. And yet, right now, my biggest regret is not all the time lost on being ill or the terrible food. But I wish that my Coke had been alright.

Faster!

Last month, the Greater Copenhagen Region experienced a rather dramatic rainfall. A few areas further away from the city were actually flooded. And a bit of earth slided away from under the train tracks on the line I use every morning on my way to work. More than a month later, they still drive slowly on that part of the rails.

Two weeks later, we had sun. It made the tracks start to expand and shortly after, the trains had to slow down as the tracks were now winding more than expected.
Of course, all this was insignificant as problems with signals have generally kept the trains running slower than usual. The weather (no matter what kind) is just there for additional spice.
Traffic research is an area of research in its own right – I believe it is part of the same general field of science as chaos theory. One part of their scientific arsenal is comparing train schedules over time, it seems. At least someone in the field did that recently. It may be a crude methodology, but it can show some interesting results: trains are no faster today than they were 40 years ago.

I recently saw parts of an old «Die Hard» film – the one taking place at an airport. Some of the scenes take place in an airplane circling the airport, waiting for clearance to land. At one point, the British air hostess says to a passenger: «We’re like British Rail. We may be late, but we’ll get there». The plane later crashes to the ground in a mighty explosion.
Having just been to London, I noticed that although the public transport may have its problems (including a minor flooding in the Underground), they were improving. Stations were being renovated as part of a billion pound renovation project.

So in Denmark, surely the same kind of progress must be on the way, right? Wrong! Yes, we have a metro, which has been a great improvement but busses and s-trains, which serve many more are worse off so the overall picture is grim. And with a bridge linking Funen and Zealand, we still don’t drive faster than 40 years ago.

Yet the only major project on the drawing board is a bridge linking Zealand and Germany. Mind you, it will not be connected to the high speed train network that is growing in Europe. Ignoring that we can already drive to Germany via Jutland (thanks to the aforementioned existing bridge), I just want to know when my daily commute will be on time. Now that would be a prestige project in my book.

Legitimate?

Right now, the leaders of eight countries are sitting at Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, Germany, behind a 12 kilometre long steel fence. Outside, thousands of protesters are demonstrating. I believe that it is democracy at its finest when people take to protesting against or for things that are important to them, but the current scenario is beginning to look like we are one ring short of «Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus». In the first ring, we have the politicians and in the second we have the protestors. Some may claim that this shows how politicians have become kings and queens, removed from reality. Others – like myself – see this as a sad necessity brought on by violent protestors.

But the first thing to annoy me is the claim that meetings like G8, WTO and the World Economic Forum are not legitimate.

Christoph Kleine, a spokesperson for the collective, said their protest is a «clear sign of our rejection of the G8 and our belief that the G8 is completely illegitimate.

«These are the governments of eight countries who think they can rule the world because they are the richest and most powerful. This is not democratic.

«We can see the result of domination by these countries - war, social injustice. They stand for the danger of climate change. They are the countries who are responsible for most of the emissions.»

-From the BBC

The claim is, that G8 (as an example) is illegitimate because they try to rule the world and they are not the elected officials of said world. True, they are not elected on behalf of the world. They are elected by majorities on eight countries (we’ll ignore Russia as an example of a non-democracy in action). The G8 does not have any formal power, and can therefore only work at all if the eight countries agree and try to enforce the agreements.

Tricia O'Rourke, spokesperson for Oxfam, said: «We are reminding them that they have to deliver.»

«In 2005 in Gleneagles they promised they would increase aid to $50bn (£25bn) by 2010, but we recently calculated following current trends they will be short by $30bn.»

-From the
BBC

It sounds like an organisation with the ability to make and keep promises, right?

The G8 – like the World Economic Forum – is a gathering of people with power and influence who talk – don’t rule, but talk. Last time I checked, it’s a good thing when people talk. But apparently, it is a bad thing when the people talking actually have power.

So who can talk without democracy suffering? Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran? Hugo Chavez of Venezuela? Or maybe the few thousand demonstrators who set cars on fire in Rostock this week as part of their protest?

I think I prefer a world where people with power talk instead of throwing bricks and molotov cocktails.

31 (in Earth Years)

On January 23, 2003, the last, very weak, signal from the Pioneer 10 space probe was received. Having been launched on March 3, 1972, the spacecraft was on track for almost 31 years. It was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter.

I am a fan of science fiction as well as real science and I actually get a kick out of looking up on a starry sky, wondering what might be out there for us to discover. And Pioneer 10 is one of the highlights so far.

Quite impressive, and yet – I have beaten one of those statistics. Contrary to one of the most fantastic pieces of space faring hardware ever built, I managed to celebrate my 31st birthday.
Turning 30 last year was a big deal. Psychologically, it is one of those moments where your life starts to change. Or at least, so everyone expects.
In my case, I can look back at several changes during my 30th year. I got married. I got a new job. Pretty big stuff, you could say. But I have so far avoided growing up or even showing hints of eventually growing up.

Birthdays are funny in the way that they are perceived as actual occasions. I love them, don’t get me wrong, but they are an odd construction, aren’t they? I mean, if the Earth had been any faster or slower in its rotation around the Sun by even a third of a percent, the year could have been 364 or 367 days long, and suddenly, birthdays would follow that rhythm instead.
And seasons aside, very few things really follow the cycles around the Sun. I change only slowly as part of the growing up that I deny takes place, or through sudden events, like when I first met my wife. It rarely follows a 365 day pattern with an additional day almost every four years.

For the first time ever, I celebrated the day with my wife (the first of my birthdays since the wedding). Breakfast from the local bakery gave a nice start to the day. And it also ended rather well, with dinner and a movie. At my request, we had sushi. I mention this only because everyone who knows me has asked if it was my idea, since they know me as a picky eater. But yes, sushi is one of those things I had learned to love over time. Hopefully, that is not a part of growing up?
After dinner, we saw the last instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean-franchise. Seeing a film about pirates helped me keep up the illusion that getting older doesn’t mean getting wiser or more grown up.

"Us" versus "Them"

On occasion, the age old question comes along: "Who am I?" In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this question becomes a short philosophical monologue, spoken by a thermonuclear missile that has been transformed into a sperm whale falling through the air. It hits the ground after a few minutes and dies. To the rest of us, the process is usually a lot longer, though the end result is the same: eventually we die. In most cases, we have as little real knowledge about who we are before dying as the missile-turned-mammal did.

So what do we instinctively do when faced with this question? Generally, we like to make up a definition, but lacking the proper tools, we tend to go about it all wrong. In early childhood, it starts with a desire to be just like mom/dad. As we become older, we are anything but our parents. They are the very thing we don't want to be. But we are still in the formative process and realise that we have desires but no fixed knowledge about who we are.

One would expect that we can define ourselves as we grow older, drawing on the knowledge of our own opinions and actions. And yet, we seem to choose another path: the teenage approach. It worked so well when all we had to worry about was popularity, prom dates and pimples.

Why not apply it to life as we get older? By now, you may think you know what I am talking about. It is the classic conflict that has been reopened.

And no, I am not talking about Israel versus the Arab world. And it’s not the difference between Europeans versus Muslim immigrants. Or Old Europe versus New Europe. I don’t even talk about Coke versus Pepsi (no contest – Coke is clearly superior) or McDonald’s versus Burger King.

No, I am talking about the most essential clash of civilisations: PC versus Mac.

In a recent set of commercials, Apple has decided to point fingers at the PC and literally say: “I am cool, you’re not”. If made as a subtle point, that sometimes work, but in this version, it is a bit too obvious and fails to convert many new arrivals to the battleground. Have a look for yourself at the current campaign and one very good spoof:

The original

The Spoof

In this conflict, I personally identify myself with the PC-friendly spoof.

Why?

Because PCs are not like the Macs. And I don't like Macs.

At this point, you may realise that I have chosen to focus not on the small conflicts that could at best earn me a religious death sentence, but at the type that can make me a target in cyberspace. Simply because I identify with something because of its opposite. Had Apple chosen a different set of commercials, my identity as a PC user would not have manifested itself so clearly - for the moment.

The only issue left is that PC can have a meaning other than a piece of digital hardware. And in that respect, I consider myself very non-PC.

My question to myself is: Am I pro-PC and anti-PC because I want to differ from the alternatives? Or is it pointless to base an identity on something that does not have an opposite? Without Apple, would it be a big deal that I prefer PC's?