Juletre om De frivillig barnfrie :

Den mest utbredte fordommen mot frivillig barnløse er kanskje at de er egoistiske. Jeg påstår at de som velger å få barn er like egoistiske. Å reprodusere seg er vel kanskje det mest dominerende innstinktet hos dyrene og også mennesket. Å få barn er å tilfredstille dette instinktet. Hvis det ikke var dette mange ønsket å oppnå på et mer eller mindre ubevisst plan, ville vi sett mange flere adopsjoner. Hvorfor “produsere” et barn med dine gener når det finnes så mange der ute som trenger et godt hjem? Mange av de som ikke ønsker seg barn, har muligens en forstyrrelse i eller mangler reproduksjonsinstinktet, og dette åpner for en mer rasjonell tenkning rundt det å få barn. Barn velger f.eks. ALDRI selv å komme til verden. Hver gang et barn opplever lidelse, er det en indirekte konsekvens av at voksne mennesker har tvunget barnet til verden. Hvis man skal ha barn, bør man ha en visshet om at man kan gi barnet et liv som inneholder mer glede enn lidelse. I Norge handler ikke dette så mye om materielle behov, men heller mentale behov. Ikke alle har nok innsikt i menneskesinnet til å kunne oppdra barn på en måte som gjør dem sterke og trygge på seg selv. En siste ting jeg vil påpeke, er at argumentet om at samfunnet er tjent med flere barn er kynisk i mine øyne. Det reduserer barn til et middel for produktivitet.

The Electronics industry has selected Blue-Ray DVD players as Christmas Present of the Year, yet 60% of Norwegian women don’t know what what Blue-Ray is. Honestly, I didn’t, either, not precisely, until I read this article, but only because I’ve totally stopped paying attention to any news about physical storage media (well, except for Micro SDHC cards and hard drives). I didn’t pay any attention to the whole business of analogue TV signals no longer being sent, either. Those kinds of issues are no longer relevant to the way we consume media.

We still have a DVD player and the cable that comes with our rent, but neither are connected to the TV, and they haven’t been for a couple of years. Everything we watch now, we watch from our computers, either directly on the screen or connected to the TV, and our screens are big enough that we don’t usually even bother to connect a computer to the TV anymore. We haven’t had a CD player connected to a stereo system for a long time, either. If we can’t get our music, games, movies, or TV programs online (always legally where possible), we don’t bother to get it anymore.

Even five years ago, which is about when we got the DVD player, I would never have imagined that we’d be moving in this direction. Johannes and I are not quite early adopters, either, so I know we’re not the only ones who consume media in this way. We are, however, smack in the middle of the target demographic for media and electronics. Media producers really need to get their business sorted out to account for these changing patterns.

An interesting article in Aftenposten today: in light of the advertising industry’s powerful ability to influence body image, The Socialist Left Party of Norway wants to investigate whether it’s possible to alter advertisement laws to disallow advertisements pressuring people to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, and generally prohibit advertisement of cosmetic surgery and weight loss aids. They reason that while politicians shouldn’t be able to control the content of TV programs, they do have the ability to legislate the contents of advertisements. The article cites statistics that among 15-year-olds in Norway, 51% of girls and 20% of boys are dissatisfied with their bodies; 80% of the girls surveyed diet, and 10-20% have eating disorders.

As a side note, the difference in weight statistics between Norway and the US is interesting: The WHO reports that 43.4% of women and 54.8% of men in Norway are “overweight” (BMI 25 or higher), with 9.3% of women and 11.3% of men falling into the “obese” category (BMI 30 or higher), whereas in the US, 72.6% of women and 75.6% of men are “overweight” and 41.8% of women and 36.5% of men are “obese”. No wonder I feel like such a freak here!

I want one! Johannes won’t object.

Three things, not necessarily in order of importance or interestingness:

1. I have just placed an order on e-bay for what will be my first real pc mod, if putting an aftermarket GPU cooler into a system I built myself from stock parts is considered a pc mod, and I’m not sure it is. My 4870 is, not surprisingly, running hotter than is ideal, so I have ordered an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 with the turbo module for it. I’m looking forward to getting back into the case.

2. I am apparently nerdier than 99% of all people.

   
   

   That’s saying a lot if “all people” is understood to mean “all people who have taken the test”, but then, we don’t really know how they’re calculating their statistics, do we? In any case, they’re not controlling for gender, so I figure I can be extra-proud of that score, given that I am a cisgendered female.

   On v2 of that test, they do control for gender:

   
   
   

   Which leads me to my final point…

3. I am very thankful to have learned about the internet at the point in time in my life when I did. I grew up around computers to the extent that I am very comfortable using them. The first time I remember using a computer in school was in first or second grade. I used them a lot in school and after school hours in the library from then on, and took my first “programming” class in seventh grade (in Apple BASIC, and thank you, Jared Housh, for teaching me all that fun sparkly stuff—perhaps it was you who set my feet upon on the path I walk today!). We got a computer at home in 1989 or so, a Tandy, and then I remember doing some gopher searches in the computer lab in high school, but it wasn’t until my first year of college that I really got seriously involved with computers.

   I am glad I had some time in my youth when I wasn’t connected to the ‘net intravenously, because if computers and the ‘net had been so omnipresent when I was growing up as they are today, I would never have managed to built the tenuous grip on the social world that grants me the “cool” part of that nerd rating above.

   And I would write more, but I’ve been up and on the computer for a huge number of hours now, and have promised my (internet-won) husband that I’d go to bed at the same time as he does tonight.

I’ve put up more photos from our summer vacation in the North of Ireland. Some are just from around Belfast; the ones from the Black Taxi tour we took are the most interesting of this newest lot.

I’m finally getting around to sorting out the pictures from our summer vacation.

The ones we took on 11th night in Belfast are probably the most interesting.

The first thing you notice on the front page of Aftenposten Online is a big photo of three ships.

Hmmm, can’t be good, whatever it is. These look like military ships, and the headline says something about the US. What kind of trouble is the US causing now with their military power?

Then the headline: USA truer med å sende hjem nødhjelp (”USA threatens to send home emergency aid to Burma”)

Right. Here we go again, mean ol’ USA using any means necessary to get what they want, even if it means withholding emergency supplies meant to help the Burmese after the cyclone. Are they using their military to turn back the ships other countries have sent offering aid?

It turns out that US ships with fresh water and other emergency supplies have been waiting for over two weeks in international waters to be allowed into the country.

The Burmese government has repeatedly refused to let any foreign countries help their citizens. The military junta running Burma claims that it will accept aid, so long as that aid is offered “with no strings attached”.

This is a perfect example of the (thankfully rare) kind of bias Norwegian media has against the US. Jeez, Aftenposten, we do a good enough job making ourselves seem like asses to the rest of the world; at least give us some credit when we do the right thing!

It looks like I won’t live to see my apartment become beachfront property.

This is a really cool tool. I’ve been wondering for a while how rising sea levels might affect me here, given that I’m 20 minutes’ walk from the fjord. When will it be time for you to flee to higher ground?

This is surreal. Particularly the part where the Hare Krishnas show up.