Living with terrorism (revisited)

Fjordman writes about me on Gates of Vienna, a blog where people who are afraid of Muslims can come together and talk about their fears. The recent massacre at Fort Hood by a Muslim causes him to remember, and mock, something I once wrote about how to live with the threat of terrorism:

Brave is sitting down calmly on a plane behind a row of suspicious-looking Arabs, ignoring your own fears, because you know those fears are irrational, and because even if there’s a chance that they are terrorists, it is more important to you to preserve an open and tolerant society than to survive this trip.

I don’t always agree with things I’ve written years ago, but I hit this on the head. The context was that passengers had refused to let their airplane take off unless suspicious-looking passengers were thrown out first.

And what I wrote was that, yes, it has happened that passengers who look suspicious actually are terrorists, but it is so unlikely that it is cowardly to cause trouble over it. It’s okay to be afraid, because we’re often afraid for no good reason, but it’s what you do with that fear that defines you.

If what you do is cause some poor guy to miss his airplane just because he has a big beard, then you’re a coward.

This applies elsewhere too. Life can be scary, but you still have to cross the street.

40’s movies marathon – part 39

Gung Ho! (1943, USA) – We follow the 2nd Marine Raiders from training to their first combat on Makin Island. Their motivations for signing up are fairly unbowdlerized: One wants to impress a girl, another “just don’t like Japs”. When they’re transported by submarine, some of them panic, and the movie makes that seem okay, because submarines are scary. And when the fighting starts, it’s random and brutal. Watched it all. IMDB reviewers call it jingoistic propaganda, which is true but not relevant, and cliched, which is silly. This is a movie that defines what later becomes cliches. But it’s not realistic: The real battle of Makin Island was a near-failure, and I doubt that Japanese soldiers went into combat with an evil sneer on their face.

Mr Lucky (1943, USA) – This war is going too far. Now they’re drafting gangsters. Also, the gangster world is going too far. They’ve allowed themselves to be taken over by Cary Grant. Watched: 18 minutes.

Madame Curie (1943, USA) – “She was poor .. she was beautiful.” Science is hard, let’s look dramatically into the camera instead, while violins play in the background to underscore what an extremely Historical Person this is. Watched: 7 minutes.

The Outlaw (1943, USA) – Doc Holliday falls in love with Billy the Kid, which makes his former lover Pat Garrett jealous. I think. Watched: 14 minutes. Wikipedia says Howard Hughes invented a special bra to emphasize the breasts of the female lead, Jane Russell, so this movie swings both ways.

Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet

Jeg var på stiftelsesmøtet for Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet i dag. Alle partiene unntatt Arbeiderpartiet deltok. Det er morsomt å se hvor bredt denne saken favner. FrP og Rødt brukte samme talerstol til å si nesten de samme tingene. Det tror jeg ikke jeg får oppleve igjen på en stund.

På en skjerm bak talerne kunne du se antallet personer som støtter kampanjen. Tallet steg jevnt og trutt gjennom hele møtet. Jeg synes du skal skrive deg på listen her, så stiger det enda litt mer.

Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet har Lars Henrik Michelsen som leder, Vampus og Virrvarr som nestledere, og andre bloggere som Pleym og Vox Populi som initiativtagere. Ser vi konturene av at nettaktivisme kan være med på å sette politisk dagsorden? Det blir spennende å se hva dette blir til. Selve stiftelsen har iallefall skaffet oppmerksomhet, og det var mye presse tilstede.

Her kan du lese mer om hvorfor jeg er mot datalagringsdirektivet, fra bloggkampanjen i sommer.

A small wooden puppet approaches from the north

In his preface to Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson dares the reader to give up. There’ll be no gradual introduction to the world he has created. You’re thrown right in the middle of it, with confusing events happening unexplained, and a shitload of characters to get to know. If you don’t like it, go read something else.

I’m vulnerable to reverse psychology, so I accept the challenge. And for the first few hundred pages the story jumps and runs without waiting for you to catch up. Later it slows down. Gardens of the Moon does the opposite of certain sprawling fantasy novels – it begins confusingly, and converges towards the end.

The story is that an empire is invading a city, and the gods interfere. The gods are merciless beings who use humans as tools for their own purposes, and the leaders of the empire are no better. So there’s death and eternal damnation in all directions. Also a mad puppet, a girl posessed by an evil god, and an ancient beast reawakened from its eternal slumber.

So there’s little to be happy about in this world. Erikson says in his preface that his aim was to write an ambitious novel, and, well, I don’t think that it is. It’s an ambitious attempt at world building, but it’s not an ambitious novel. The bleak setting is too restrictive for that.

There are many sequels to Gardens of the Moon, but thankfully they’re self-contained novels. I haven’t decided if I’ll read them.

5 milliarder millioner trillioner fantasillioner multiplioner og 16 øre

Tor Andre har testet Kindle, og synes det er greit å ta farvel med papirboken:

Styrken til papir ligger i kombinasjonen av skumming og dybdelesing, ikke luftig nostalgi om lukten og følelsen av et fysisk produkt. Den holdningen ligner litt for mye på villfarelsen til musikkbransjen om betydningen av CD-plater.

Praktbøker vil fremdeles fungere som et nisjeprodukt, men i fremtiden vil det komme lesebrett som klarer å kombinere leseligheten til e-ink og grensesnittet på nettet. Da er papir blåst av banen som lesemedium nummer en.

Jeg testet e-bøker for noen år siden. Det var ikke for meg. Jeg kom fram til at jeg har samme forhold til papirbøker som Onkel Skrue har til pengene sine. Det er de samme bøkene selv om de er elektroniske. Men det er ikke det samme allikevel.

Jeg liker å fylle bokhyllene mine til bristepunktet.

Jeg liker å bruker bøker som veggdekorasjon.

Jeg liker å brette bøkene mine, lage eselører, skrive navnet mitt, og sette teite ex libris-merker i dem.

Og jeg liker å ha en bokkø stående på gulvet til å organisere lesingen med.

Men mest av alt liker jeg å legge alle bøkene ut på gulvet og bade i dem.

Leiligheten min ville rett og slett se naken ut uten papirbøker. Så der står jeg. Det er ikke slik at papirbøker er riktig og e-bøker feil. Men for meg er det ikke noe tema.

40’s movies marathon – part 38

Yellow Canary (1943, UK) – An English woman makes everyone uncomfortable by being pro-Nazi, and possibly a traitor. She’s exiled to Canada(?!), and spies and eye-patch-wearing Nazis follow along on the trip. Best line, spoken by a rich old woman to her husband, while their boat is being boarded by Germans: “Wouldn’t it be nice to do something violent?” Watched it all.

Air Force (1943, USA) – Wholesome pilots set out for the Pacific. Watched: 8 minutes.

Thousands Cheer (1943, USA) – The patriotic war musical is a repulsive concept. Patriotic war movies can be good. So can musicals. But mix them together, and the result is quite demonic. Watched: 8 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the musical numbers, which were all spawned in the hell-pit of Satan.

The Man from Down Under (1943, USA) – An Australian soldier adopts two orphans after the Great War, because one of them is good at boxing. That seems like a unbelievable thing to do. Watched: 11 minutes.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943, USA) – I can’t figure out these old zombie movies, where the zombies are just reanimated corpses without a will of their own. This one aims for a classy feel, as if there’s a message here, possibly about slavery. Watched: 17 minutes.

Stage Door Canteen (1943, USA) – I have a horrible suspicion that those troops on the train are headed into a patriotic war musical. Dear God no! Watched: 6 minutes.

Malletopathy – the healthcare revolution

No more conventional medicine for me: Malletopathy is here, an alternative treatment that combines ancient wisdom with modern technology.

The Mallet is made of wood, borrowed not harvested, from the deep forests in Norway. The arctic climate, combined with virtually no pollution, makes the wood hard, pure and very susceptible to energy transfer The Mallet is handcrafted by experts in Malletopathy, sized and fitted to the specific illness or injury.

The Cloth of Healing is handmade, using only virgin arctic cotton. It is thereby ideal for energy reception and molecular memory storage. The weaving of the arctic cotton prolongs the energy storage time to practically infinity, limited only by the natural degeneration of organic material.

The energy transfer, through the art of Mallletopathy, is a complex process on molecular level. In layman’s terms, it is similar to the transfer of light to heat, fuel to propulsion, and sunlight into vitamins. Energy is constant, what varies is the state it is in.

The secret to properly transfer and store energy lies also in the way The Mallet is struck onto The Cloth of Healing. Ten times for each element, rotating east to west. This ensures that all the latent energy is transferred from The Mallet to The Cloth, thereby clearing The Mallet for a new energy transfer session.

40’s movies marathon – part 37

Scene from the Moscow Trials, which were absolutely totally I-swear-by-Stalin's-glorious-moustache fairMission to Moscow (1943, USA) – Contrary to what you have been told, Russia is nothing at all like brainwashed leader-worshipping Germany. German soldiers are buffoons, Soviet soldiers are exotic. German leaders are fanatics, Soviet leaders are kind old men with grandfather beards, honest men of integrity who want nothing but peace for the world. And the Moscow trials were fair! Based on the book by ambassador Joseph Davies, a Soviet apologist. Watched it all, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Somebody ought to .. er, do something about these Communists infiltrating Hollywood.

No Time for Love (1943, USA) – Claudette Colbert is an educated woman with a promising career in photography. But what she really needs in her life is a macho blue-collar worker who knows what he wants and is not afraid to take it. Watched: 24 minutes.

It’s That Man Again (1943, UK) – I suspect this may be funny in a Spike Milligan sort of way if you’re able to follow along. It’s too quick for me. Watched: 4 minutes.

Background to Danger (1943, USA) – As the announcer breathlessly informs us, the fate of the war lies not in actual battles fought by actual soldiers but in silly spy games among diplomats in neutral Turkey. Watched: 6 minutes.

Corregidor (1943, USA) – Just dreadful, but it begins Dramatically on the Philippines on December 6 1941, so I guess that makes it all okay. Watched: 3 minutes.