Hårfjott Balletak, politikkbloggsfærens fryktløse tastaturhamrer, har våknet til live igjen, i en gjestekommentar hos Meland Konsernet.

Balletak ble sist (og først) sett i Nordstafett i 2006. (Nordstafett var noe bloggere drev med i 2006.)

Neal Stephenson, this blog’s patron saint, talks about SF culture and mundane culture, and what it means for a book to be genre:

Via Wet Asphalt, who adds that it’s pointless to try to define SF as a certain kind of story. SF is a set of shared cultural traditions.

As Neal Stephenson says, the people who read science fiction overlap with the people who read fantasy, despite these being different kinds of stories. Asking what exactly makes a novel SF is to miss the point – it’s the culture of the readers that matters. Geek culture.

Stephenson says that in a way we’re all geeks now, but that is to water out the word. SF is influential, but geek is still a separate culture. It’s not a narrowly defined culture. There’s no uniform or canon. Anyone who calls themselves a geek is one, and also many who don’t. But there’s still a difference.

There are also geek snobs, people so fed up with being looked down on by cultural snobs that they look down in return. I’m more relaxed. But I still think you’re the poorer for not knowing who Neal Stephenson is.

That reminds me, I should read his newer novels soon. Some day. (Neal Stephenson fans can be recognized by their ambivalence towards him. Anyone who says they love everything he’s ever written is an impostor.)

Alle som skriver på nett er klikkhorer. Her er noen av dagens overskrifter fra norske nettaviser:

- Russiske soldater skjøt mot to presidenter (Hvilke presidenter? Klikk for å finne ut!)

28 minutter som forandret metallverdenen. I kveld spilles de i Spektrum. (Hvem? Hva? Vær så snill å klikk meg!)

PASSOPP! Denne saken bør du lese hvis du har barn (Jawohl!)

Alle linkene har blitt endret for å forhindre inntjening.

En god overskrift oppsummerer saken slik at du kan vurdere om du har lyst til å lese videre. Nettavisoverskrifter kommer pakket inn i neonfarger, vedlagt et tårevått brev fra journalisten som ber deg om å klikke slik at de får bonus i år og slipper å feire jula på fattighuset, (ja det finnes fattighus i Norge og journalisten må dra dit med hele sin familie hvis du ikke klikker her nå med en eneste gang, klikk da for faen, neimen så klikk da, klikk, kom igjen! klikk klikk klikk!)

Klikkfangstkunsten er fremdeles ung i Norge. Resten av webben viser vei. Cracked.com har foredlet den klikkvennlige listesjangeren. På reddit.com plukker leserne selv ut de linkene som gir dem størst klikketrang. Jeg ønsker å fremskynde denne forklikkelsesprosessen, slik at nettavisene dør og folk heller leser bloggen min. Eventuelle nettavisskribenter blant leserne står derfor fritt til å låne følgende overskrifter:

9 ting Støre sa på pressekonferansen i dag som vil SJOKKERE DEG

De 5 mest sexy statsministrene i norsk historie

Klikk her hvis du synes FrP ikke bør vinne valget i 2009

WTF! [NSFW]

This one made the rounds today:

Here are many more, for every group stupid people have stupid questions about. Men, women, jews, muslims.

I thought this was pretty funny. So I did this:
And now I’m just sad.

Update: Still happy? Here are more:

• Why am I so
• Why am I still
• Why am I not

And now I am never going to do that ever again.

I have a long and troubled relationship with eMusic.com. Selling DRM-free MP3′s back when most record companies were still learning how to code HTML, they’ve always had this spark of unfulfilled potential about them. DRM is stupid for a lot of reasons, such as “what do you do when the technology changes“. eMusic is the one company that have always understood this, and yet they always make some mistake that balances out their good intentions. Back in 2001, the mistake was to sell low quality MP3 files. (I asked them why, they said they didn’t have the storage space for higher quality. Well, that’s allright then!) Today it’s their pricing model. eMusic.com doesn’t have prices, they have “credits”. You subscribe to a plan that gives you a number of credits every month. Mistake #1: You’re not allowed to have an audiobook subscription without a music subscription. What if you only want audiobooks? (I do.) Not possible. It says so on the website. Except it is possible, if you send them an e-mail about it. What? Mistake #2: When you’ve finished your one book of the month, there’s no obvious way to buy more credits. The page for doing this is well hidden, and you must spend those extra credits within 90 days, so think carefully. Other stores encourage you to spend money. eMusic have created something closer to a rationing system. And still they’re better than most competitors. Is it any wonder I pirate first, and buy the things I like on CD and DVD afterwards?

From FORA.tv: Laura Donohue talks about counterterrorism and surveillance in the US after September 11. She argues that ‘freedom’ vs ‘security’ is the wrong angle, and that one of the overlooked challenges of counterterrorism is the power it gives to the executive branch.
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Peter Galbraith talks about the Iraq war, the prospects of democracy, and why Iran is the victor of the war:
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From FORA.tv: Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris talk about the less-known backstory of the Abu Ghraib scandal. You need to watch this.
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An interview with the satirist and former Republican speech writer Christopher Buckley, (author of the delightful Thank You For Smoking):
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Richard Rigby explains what’s happening in China:
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Robert Reich talks about the financial crisis:
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New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins talks about his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq:

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Jacob Weisberg talks about the life and character of George W. Bush:

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OMG!!1! Two hours of talking! Brain hurts .. must .. find .. funny .. cat .. picture. Aaaah:

“Go to a bookstore, and look at the business shelves: you will find plenty of books telling you how to make your first million, or your first quarter-billion, etc. You will not be likely to find a book on “how I failed in business and in life”—though the second type of advice is vastly more informational, and typically less charlatanic. Indeed, the only popular such finance book I found that was not quacky in nature—on how someone lost his fortune—was both self-published and out of print. Even in academia, there is little room for promotion by publishing negative results—though these are vastly more informational and less marred with statistical biases of the kind we call data snooping. So all I am saying is, “What is it that we don’t know”, and my advice is what to avoid, no more.”

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I tell people don’t get your representation of the news from television, because it hits you in a part of your brain, and the way it hits you is much more the story than if you’d read it. And if you read it, it’s much more distorting if you read words than if you’re reading statistics.”

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

FORA.tv is a video site that wants to make you smarter. Without saying anything bad about YouTube and its imitators, this is a rare ambition on the web today. FORA.tv gathers videos of speeches, lectures and panel debates on topics such as politics, science and culture. The videos are long, often boring, and rarely contain even a single TV-worthy soundbite. It’s my favourite new website in a long while – this is what’s missing from television. In such a gathering of public intellectuals, academics and activists, you’ll inevitably suffer many silly and eccentric speakers, and if that is enough to scare you away I recommend you go watch this freaking hilarious dramatic chipmunk on YouTube. For the rest of you, here are some recommendations to start with:

• I already linked to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is a bad speaker, but has important things to say, (a common combination).
• A panel on propaganda. Skip the first speaker, and my favourite part (about the Solidarity movement in Poland) begins at chapter 15.
• This second part from the same conference talks about the science of manipulation. My favourite part is with Frank Luntz from chapter 9.
• Walt Mossberg talks about cellphones and internet technology.
• Sudhir Venkatesh talks about his book Gang Leader For a Day, about what he learned from his friendship with a Chicago gang leader.