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Saturday, March 24, 2001
Posted 3/24/2001 by Beorn
Much to my surprise, the webcast of
A-ha's concert in Oslo just now was
done very professionally. And the music was good too.
Posted 3/24/2001 by Beorn
 Some
weird fantasy at Electric Sheep,
involving Bill Gates, Walt Disney's brain, and the extinction of humanity.
Patrick Farley is up there
with Scott McCloud as one
of the visionaries of web comics. He doesn't make much, but the stuff he makes is absolutely wonderful.
Posted 3/24/2001 by Beorn
Murdoch jr eagerly licks the boots
of his daddy's shady business partners, another example of megacorp media with absolutely
no shred of integrity.
[From Drudge.]
Here's a frighteningly long list
of News Corp mags and TV channels You Might Not Want To Trust, (almost as long as
AOL Time Warner's).
Posted 3/24/2001 by Beorn
I can't put my finger on precisely why, but this
article in Aftenposten on artists and poseurs may be one of the silliest things I've ever read. Don't know why I'm
linking to it, really.
Friday, March 23, 2001
Posted 3/23/2001 by Beorn
Two different worlds: In Russia, 13 out of 21 newspapers will print anything you like if you pay them well. In the US,
27 out of 52 college newspapers won't print a controversial
political ad, no matter how much you pay them. Oddly similar cases, yet vastly different.
Thursday, March 22, 2001
Posted 3/22/2001 by Beorn
Another Modern Humorist dawt-com satire - this time in meta!
Posted 3/22/2001 by Beorn
Added Hverdag, the online diary of Kariann Askeland, to the
norwegian blogs and diaries list.
Also, Noemata seems to have come back to life.
Posted 3/22/2001 by Beorn
Say anything you like about Amazon's patent, lawyer and highway robbery department,
but it is pretty nice of them
to replace that Duck Soup tape
without actual proof that it is broken. Or it might be one of those instances where niceness and business sense overlaps, I don't know.
Posted 3/22/2001 by Beorn
Well you can stick your nine to five livin'
And your collar and your tie
And stick your moral standards
'Cause it's all a dirty lie
You can stick your golden handshake
And you can stick your silly rules
And all the other shit
That they teach to kids in school
('Cause I ain't no fool)
Gonna be a rock 'n' roll singer
Gonna be a rock 'n' roll star
Gonna be a rock 'n' roll singer
I'm gonna be a rock 'n' roll,
A rock 'n' roll star
- AC/DC, Rock'n Roll Singer
Oh well, back to reality, where tanstaafl rules the day.
Posted 3/22/2001 by Beorn
No opnar han herlege Kjetil sin noble munn: "er du klar, kugutt? Kor vil du ha kula- i panna eller i prateholet?" Tenna hans glimrar i s�rstatssola. Han rettar kjekt p� hatten, og spyttar snusen p� ein dum unge som ser p� med store, patetiske gluggar. Dei g�r tyve skritt fr� kvarandre. Klokka p� r�dhust�rnet tikkar m�lretta fram mot han ub�nnh�rlege duellen. "DONG" Her tek dermed historia ei interessant vending- Han Kjetil spring bort til han Ari i lynande fart, ja, f�r pjattmakaren rekk � snu sitt udugelege corpus, og perforerar han brutalt med sitt mannslem.
From an amusing thread over at Dagbladet on the Rolness-Behn
catfight. I'm siding with Rolness here - he's got a sharp pen and a clear head.
I say: More blood, more
snide remarks - less respect and
big words. Some of these literature pundits take themselves way too
seriously.
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
Posted 3/21/2001 by Beorn
 Salon is planning a subscription
service - an experiment everyone knows Slate failed with
two years ago, so they must be pretty desperate. The united
response from Kuro5hin:
A big shrug.
Salon, like Slashdot, has been fading into irrelevancy for a long time - I won't miss it.
Posted 3/21/2001 by Beorn
My work had me going across town to get something done, (details irrelevant). It didn't take long, which was
as good excuse as any to take the rest of the day off. Spent some time walking through a part of Oslo I haven't explored
before, starting from a place above Tøyen where you can see most of central Oslo, down
Tøyengata and through Grønland. Nobody ever accused
Oslo of being beautiful, but there are some well-hidden spots here and there that doesn't look too bad when you're
not in a rush to get anywhere else. Ended up at Oslo S and bought some scifi
(Heinlein and Poul Anderson) and another volume of R. Crumb comics. My back is still killing me, and I feel pretty
funny.
Posted 3/21/2001 by Beorn
Must have slept wrong, because my back is giving me hell this morning. Ouch.
Tuesday, March 20, 2001
Posted 3/20/2001 by Beorn
 Minister of Church,
Education and Research (!), Trond Giske,
refuses
to budge in the issue of Oasen Bibelsenter, a church that wishes to run a private elementary school on
traditional christian principles.
Giske wants to keep religion out of education, which I disagree with -
parents should decide how to raise their children, not the government, and religion is not child-abuse.
In addition to this, he lists two arguments that strikes me as very odd:
2.) Departementet mener at undervisningsopplegget er sv�rt individualisert og at den sterke vektleggingen av individuell oppl�ring i undervisningsplanene i for sterk grad bryter med vesentlige prinsipper for norsk skole.
3) Departementet antar at Oasen barneskole ikke vil ivareta alle prinsippene i FN�s barnekonvensjon.
Why is individualized education bad, and how does religion violate the
UN childrens rights convention?
Posted 3/20/2001 by Beorn
 Modern Humorist: First aid for the dying dot-com.
Read and memorize - if you have a Real Job it may seem quaint now, but when your best friends dot-com is lying there
gasping for air, there is no time for indecision.
Posted 3/20/2001 by Beorn
On one hand it annoys me that Salon heralds a lame, intrusive music service as
the Next Napster.
On the other hand I'm so relieved every time one of these mag parrots don't mention and bring unwanted RIAA attention
to AudioGalaxy (easy to use, good selection, and .. oops .. centralized servers).
I also haven't seen much mainstream coverage of FreeNet, which continues to grow, and
is destined to annoy censors,
copyright holders and moral guardians everywhere
when it reaches critical mass. I don't know
if I support it, but I do know it will cause some ugly pedo/nazi/terror headlines.
Posted 3/20/2001 by Beorn
Mapping the growth of a meme, from the early posts at Something Awful, TMOL and Stile, through
Tribal War and the Register, to Fox News and LA Times! That's quite a journey, placing AYBABTU up there with
Mahir and the Hamster Dance.
Monday, March 19, 2001
Posted 3/19/2001 by Beorn
That high school Drudge apprentice I wrote about
earlier
was linked to by Drudge himself today, which may explain this
amusing headline: "WHAT HAPPENED? TRIPOD SERVER SHUTS DOWN DAHILLER; REASON UNKNOWN; SEVERAL ARTICLES LOST...DEVELOPING..." OJR, who carried
Matt Welch's original, excellent article was also linked to,
and currently isn't available at all.
Update: Looks like a mistake at Tripod
was to blame, and whatever load brought OJR to its knees yesterday, it's gone now. All the better reason to
read that article.
Posted 3/19/2001 by Beorn
Last years
Donald Duck & Co are being made available in huge three-month pocket
books for 140 NOK. I just picked one up at the grocery store. This is the kind of great, obvious idea I would never
think of in a million years. It is clearly targeted directly
at people like me, ex-readers who can't be bothered to collect issues the old-fashioned way, week by week.
There's rarely more than
one good story anyway, and with my extremely limited salary and shelf space
I have to prioritize, so Donald Duck lost out to the competition
years ago. But now that it's both cheap and pre-collected, I feel it is time to resume my donaldist duties again.
Posted 3/19/2001 by Beorn
 What are the albanians in Macedonia fighting for, anyway?
Here's a nice background to
the situation, and a more up to date
analysis of the NLA.
One thing is for sure: The next politician who suggests military interference in this ethnic quag-mire, I'll hit over the head with a
large, heavy history book.
Posted 3/19/2001 by Beorn
Mr Rock'n Roll Incarnated is currently seeing the
very beautiful granddaughter of
one of my favourite authors, who happened to be part norwegian. Coincidence? Well, propably, but it's a
nice coincidence, and I like nice coincidences.
(Sincere apologies for linking to a
"newspaper" that refers to Roald Dahl
as a "crime writer", I really tried to find a better source -- but then again it's not very important news, is it?)
Posted 3/19/2001 by Beorn
Thanks to Jill for digging up Nordbø 11,
another norwegian blog.
Sunday, March 18, 2001
Posted 3/18/2001 by Beorn
Mir is coming down this Thursday,
and if the gods of turbulence and galactic karma wills it, there's a reasonable chance it won't hit
Australia. Any technical equipment can fail at any time. We put the risk at 2 to 3%. These are the russians own
words, mind you, so at least they're not exaggerating.
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