The brown people on the East-side are causing problems again: the city districts that have the most immigrants are also the city districts that receive the most kontantstøtte.

Kontantstøtte is the money the government gives to parents if they don’t have their kid enrolled in a public preschool. Some people think families should lose kontantstøtte for their other kids if they have a four-year-old who doesn’t know Norwegian; some people think the entire program should be dismantled because “so many” immigrants’ kids end up starting school without knowing Norwegian. I figured that when people were complaining that these kids didn’t know Norwegian when they started school, they were talking about 6-year-olds (until recently, 7-year-olds). So I understood the concern about integration and the motivation to do something about it, although I most definitely wouldn’t agree that denying families this money would be the answer. But then I found out that kontantstøtte is only given to parents of children who are between one and three years of age. So people in this society seriously believe that after mothers’ one year of paid maternity leave is up, they should turn their babies, their one year old babies, over to the state to raise while they, the mothers, go back to work. WTF?!? Why have kids at all? Just to create more workers, I guess.

The general attitude here is that we need to liberate these immigrant women and their families, that we need to teach them that the proper way to live is to kick your kid out of the house and into pre-school ASAP so the women can get back to work. That there is no value in raising your own kids or being a homemaker, that wanting to do so is incomprehensible at best and generally not worthy of respect, and that no sensible woman would make such a choice…and therefore that those women who do stay home with their kids are actively forced to do so by their families or at the very least brainwashed by their patriarchal cultures. That families who don’t follow the Norwegian pattern in life are ignorant, and if we just enlighten them, they’ll eventually come over to the Norwegian way of thinking.

This is an extremely common form of hubris here: I’ve seen it recently in articles about health and “friluftsliv” lately:

Vi har sett at gapet mellom øst og vest ikke har jevnet seg ut i takt med det økte fokus på ernæring. Noe av forklaringen kan være at ernæringsinformasjon fra myndighetene ikke når fram til enkelte grupper og at de dermed bare blir påvirket av sitt sosiale miljø, sier Øye.

“We’ve seen that the gap between the east and west sides of town hasn’t closed as expected given the increased focus on nutrition. Part of the reason might be that information about nutrition from the government doesn’t reach some demographics and that they are influenced by their social milieu as a result.”

So it’s because us East-siders (shorthand for blue-collar people and foreigners) are ignorant that we’re not as obsessed with health as the West-siders. It can’t be that eating healthily is more difficult for poorer people, that people who have to work many hours to get by don’t have the time or energy to eat in accordance with the government’s recommendations. It can’t be that status isn’t tied to thinness amongst the working-class in the same way it is amongst the rich. It can’t be that we know what the government thinks is healthy, but we just don’t care. No, we’re just stupid.

For selv om noen nordmenn er født med ski på bena og fjellsekk på ryggen og tilsynelatende alltid er på farten til en topp eller isbre du knapt har hørt om, er det nok av oss som trenger både dytt i rumpa og gode tips og råd før vi kommer oss ut på tur.

“Even though some Norwegians are born with skis on their feet and backpacks on their backs, and seem to be always on the way to the top of a glacier you’ve probably never heard of, there are some of us that need both a kick in the ass and good tips and advice before we get out and hike.”

So it’s not the case that some people are outdoorsy and some aren’t; it’s the case that we’re all supposed to be outdoorsy, but some of us need a kick in our surely-fat asses to get us off the couch and into the mountains and forests where we belong.

Can you tell that I’ve had some nasty run-ins with these attitudes before? This sort of thing is by far one of my least favorite things about this country.

“The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.” (Possibly NSFW)

I’ve got a N91, not an E70. The N91 is customized to be an mp3 player, so it doesn’t have the fold-out keyboard, but it can do everything else the E70 can. And I’ve had it for a year and a half. I think it’s so funny to read the articles coming out in the US about the iPhone: “Oooh, it has Wi-Fi! And a web browser! And custom ringtones you make from iTunes songs…for 99 cents in addition to the price of the song!” I’m so sure! You can’t even use your own mp3’s to make ringtones? What century is this?

ETA “One thing PC users can do that Mac users can’t:” (Probably NSFW) Johannes’s computer is on the fritz (his computers are always on the fritz) and he’s started whining about wanting a mac. That’ll be lovely—then when that computer goes on the fritz, we won’t be able to fix it. Or does the 23.990 NOK purchase price—that’s 4,261.70 in USD—include service?