Interesting article on how Barack Obama used to be when he was a law professor at U. Chicago. I think we can probably learn a lot about him from this article. Also check out the exam questions he put out. They give interesting insights into his professional life and thinking. But I guess the real sense you get from the article is what happens at the end:

But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

So even some former students who are thrilled at Mr. Obama’s success wince when they hear him speaking like the politician he has so fully become.

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”

Obama is becoming less and less complicated in his rhetoric, and I don't like that one bit.

More on Moore

Enormous and highly interesting transcript of an interview with comic book/graphic novel writer Alan Moore. I'm about 1/3rd through it. Some pretty massive spoilers for Watchmen, Lost Girls and V for Vendetta, so far. I'm guessing probably a lot of other pieces.

Moore is crazy in a really interesting way. He has an advanced and completely off-the-wall cosmology and worldview (it revolves around the idea of language as a sort of magic putting you in touch with a Platonic shared "idea space" which humans tap into, where life-forms are just condensed ideas in some sense) which is completely fictional - something he would be the first to admit - but still works and enables him to function in the world and be prolifically creative and artistically successful. It seems to function as an understanding of the world, despite leading to some very poor fashion choices. In my book, that's not just as good as being true, it's the same thing.

Anyway, his philosophy is expounded on at great length in the Promethea series which I should warn you is only for the specially interested, but also does some things with the comic book form that are astounding. The short version can be found in this immense and very interesting interview.

Matthew Yglesias has a nice observation by Paul Krugman:

even though the political coverage is the part of the media that people like to talk about, it's actually fairly marginal to the business. The New York Times is known for its hard news coverage, but he observes that from a business perspective it's primarily a fashion and food publication that runs a small political news operation on the side. One issue of T Magazine, he says, pays for an entire NYT European bureau.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

You know, this is - excuse me - a damn fine cup of coffee.

Coal:
Cheap. Abundant. Clean. Cheap.

Proof, if you needed it, that life is just weird: freaky fungi are being fertile and fecund in the depths of the Chernobyl reactor. But they're not just managing to survive down there despite of-, they're actually thriving because of. They're enjoying the balmy radiation and using it as a source of energy, like photosynthesis. Mmm. Caesium isotopes.

They've captured Radovan Karadzic. O happy day!

Fun fact: Karadzic was an established playwright and poet in addition to his career as a politician and mass murderer.

"As a conclusion (...)
Terror is still a leading topic in Turkish media."

Also: water is wet

I'm covering an international media conference in Stockholm for my newspaper. The first presentation I went to this morning was monumentally unhelpful. I swear, this is word for word off the powerpoint slide:

Summary and conclusion

- Football is intertwined with national aspects.
- Jewish-Arab tensions are linked to the Arab-Palestinian conflict.
- Israeli national identity is never far removed from a religious Jewish identity.

As I'm typing this, a Japanese anime fantasy girl walks past. She's like something out of some twisted Japanese teenage fantasy. All got up in a pink schoolgirl uniform and pigtails with the shortest skirt in the history of skirts, cleavage down to her navel and makeup that she applied with a caulding gun, making innocent "what are you all looking at?"-eyes at the room. I feel like I just landed in a David Lynch movie.

Having one of those days where you feel like watching a one-and-a-half-hour video of a giant squid being dissected? Me too.

(via boing boing)

(Aside)

In the sidebar of the New York Times web site, the following happy note in a commercial for the NY Times Health section (you may get something different, I don't know).

Also in Health:

* How would you like to die?
* What I wish I'd done differently
* Why children are not "little adults"

Naxos is giving away The Best of Naxos Early Music for free on Amazon. Downloading that when I get home.

Bokmerkes til seinere bruk

Folkevalgtdatabasen. Inneholder kontaktinfo på alle dine folkevalgte. Et utrolig bra tiltak fra bystyremedlem for Oslo SV og blogger Ivar Johansen.

Interplanetary Twitt'ring

One of the things I love most about Twitter is the Phoenix feed from Mars, @MarsPhoenix. I mean, it's not really a feed from Mars, but it's written by someone in the ground crew of the digger from ITS first person perspective. It has now been joined by the Cassini probe, @CassiniSaturn which is out doing stuff near Saturn

CassiniSaturn Also passed through Saturn's ring plane today, from north to south. And observed other moons Enceladus, Janus, and Rhea.
3 hours ago from web

CassiniSaturn Busy day at Saturn! Distant flybys of the moons Daphnis (altitude = 43,000 km; 26,000 mi) and Prometheus (altitude = 31,000 km; 20,000 mi).
3 hours ago from web

Arkhipelagos

I drømme vender jeg stadig tilbake til et bestemt sted: en grovkornet klippe med utsikt over et bestemt hav; disfullt og frådene mot klippene. Stedet (er det en øy?) figurerer i de forskjelligste sammenhenger, og jeg har for lengst gitt opp å forklare dets tilsynekomst. Enkelte ganger befinner jeg meg sammen med venner, grillende ved vannet eller i krig; andre ganger svever jeg alene gjennom de salte luftmassene, på arms avstand fra klippeveggen, nærmest i helikopterflukt over de grønnhvite sjøene. (…) Likevel er øya aldri fremmed for meg. Jeg vet for eksempel med sikkerhet at klippene vender mot øst, og at sola alltid er på vei opp. Luftstrømmene er behagelig varme selv om havtemperaturen er lav (derav den duse disen), og jeg behøver bare å lukke øynene for å vite at jeg har vært der utallige ganger før.
(Sigurd Tenningen, "Arkhipelagos" fra Gæa)

Back in Oslo after a rough night on the Haukeli Express bus.

This is a really interesting blog post criticising the "Green Revolution" which, if the post is right, I seem to have been happily drinking the Kool-Aid on for a while.

A while back, as an experiment, Neil Gaiman's website put up American Gods, one of his novels, for free online reading. The result?

Harper Collins sold a lot more of all my books while the free American Gods was out there, with sales of all my titles up 40% through independent bookshops, I think I can safely say that we'll be doing it -- or rather, something similar -- again. And that the 56% of people who didn't enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how we do it next time out.

Kunstnerkår

Her er et intervju jeg gjorde i Klassekampen sist uke med billedkunstneren Anders Eiebakke. Det handler om kunstnerkårundersøkelsen og hvorfor kunstnere har så lite penger.

Fakta:

Medianinntekten for kunstnerisk arbeid i Norge er 155.000 kr.

Kunstnere jobber gjennomsnittlig nesten et fullt gjennomsnittsårsverk med kunst.

I tillegg jobber 3/4 med andre ting i tillegg.

Det er for mange kunstnere på markedet til at det klarer å absorbere det. Dette beskriver forskerne som "et strukturelt trekk ved kunstmarkedet" som er stabilt på tvers av tid og rom.

*

Dette er et intervju med Marianne Heier som er en oppfølger til intervjuet med Eiebakke. Journalisten er Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik.

Karl-Otto Apel

These are the notes from my interview with the philosopher Karl-Otto Apel. Apel is 86, hard of hearing and his English is good, but with some problems. This is why some parts of the interview seem a little less coherent than others, because I had to struggle to both communicate and take notes. Note also that these are notes, not the finished interview (which is sadly only available in Norwegian). I have only edited this by inserting a few explanatory phrases here and there and filling in my own questions in italics.

*

- Your talk at the seminar focused on Kant's essay "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View". What prompted you to discuss this essay?

I was fascinated by sentence 7 of the first essay. I have never really gave attention to it, but I suddenly think to myself ”this is a strange sentence”. It's usually overlooked, but what he does here is very new: International law takes priority over the law of the republic. We can’t have internal law without solving problems external first.

Habermas says: the structure of democracy is the same as the structure of universal law. I say no! This cannot be the case. More than one democracy and they don’t have same structure. E.g. law of asylum are all different. US didn’t want to enter the International Criminal Court. Refused it. This is one of the typical deficiencies of international crime and human rights. In many other respects also we have differences between different democracies. They will not quickly have same constitution! I would say against Habermas and Rawls also that it must be possible to intervene in single democracies in the name of human rights. Appealing to human rights.

- You mean militarily?

Maybe even militarily, but usually it will be much more quiet.
Every day news about human rights discussions with for instance Iran or China. I mean in the sense of publicity, media, discussions, also. Habermas does this first book – this is for him the paradigm of Universal law.

This is problem between pragmatic differences go into these constitutions. This is characteristic aspects of lack of cosmopolitan law. Many problems that have to be solved in quite different ways. In Europe now the problems of immigration from Africa, Turkey in Germany, France from Algeria. Spain, these problems of immigration of poor people from Africa. Has to be settled by constitutions. This would be better if we had sensible agreements. European countries come to agreement on how to deal with these people who sometimes die on the ocean heading to [unintelligble]. Just one example to show that this has to be settled. Raison d’etat of the different countries needs to come to agreement.

- A consensus?

Consensus is central issue in my philosophy and Habermas. Consensus theory of truth, not factual, but ideal consensus in the sense of Peirce. Only idea, never be ultimate consensus that disables criticism and objections.

- An idea to work towards?

In my philosophy regulative ideas are important. Alternative: metaphysics, platonics or lack of any idea of progress at all. I don’t want progress in the sense that postmodernists deny as if we could have knowledge of the future, but we could have regulative ideas, for instance that of Kant's world citizen. We will never have the moment where there can never be an improvement. This is the great possibility for the regulative ideas. Richtsmass [sp.?] = Kant = measure for the direction we have to go in search for truth or philosophy or science. We need regulative ideas in all these things. Not metaphysical knowledge. These can be found by practical reason. It is our duty, Kant says. Burden of proof is on us.

Also I would say regulative ideas is not the same as a utopia. That’s more of a alternative picture of the world. More a matter for poets and literature. They are less than a utopia, not so concrete. But on the other hand they are much stronger, because they are more serious.

- In your talk, you described the situation for international law as "aporetic". In what sense do you mean?

Goes back to Kant in a sense! It’s all aporetic. If not everything is lost, we have only the possibility of a negative surrogate. He has the feeling that he is working on an aporia. He writes...

First: We need to leave the state of nature, strong state for all people.

Then: No, it would destroy the autonomous states. They will never accept that.

After the first world war when the league of nations was founded. Woodrow Wilson one of his strong words was autonomy of the nations. He wanted the Kantian situation: a folkeforbund. Kant wanted a federation of republics, not monarchies! But he was not against monarchs as governors, but he should respect the republican constitution. A matter of transition in the 18th century.

Frederik the Great: ”Only greatest servant of the state”, although he was not the ideal man of Kant. First war he started: ”Why did I do that? In order to come into the gazetten [newspapers].”

Approximation was always connected to the idea of regulative ideas. Is a difficult problem to think of approximation. Progress is aterrible problem. From our point of view we can say something was a progress, but in potential infinity? I’m not a follower of Kuhn.

- Kant wanted a federation of republics. What do you want?

I can’t say if it will be the case, or what we should do, but I do think we should continue to do certain things. We should support the UN. Make it stronger. It is not strong enough today. The five world powers in the sec.coun. are not republics. Complete historical accident. Constantly it is discussed. The Brazilians, Nigerans, Germans, all want to become constant members of the sec.coun. Best we can hope for. It is an ambiguity. One of the members of the seminar said he wants a world state. Another said we have so many problems that are global in nature, so we need a world of state.

I wrote a paper on this in Spain whether the US should be the world power. It was too much for me. There were too many arguments against an empire.

The Roman empire had human rights, in a sense. Apostle Paulus was proud. But the Romans did not tolerate others.

- Are empires dangerous in themselves?

I am a historian. I must think of examples. Let me think:
If one looks at the Chinese history: Today China is very powerful, but in history there were times that China was the only real state, and the only superpower. From their point of view in Eastern Asia they were an empire. Never been any example of an uncontested empire.

We have not an empire in our current situation, but now with Iraq we have one. The US has hegemony and superpower and the most powerful technology. I was against [Iraq]. Burned with lie and veto of the other members of the council.

It is ambigious what Kant says. The only idea of reason can be a world state, but no, they will never accept it, it can become a tyranny. A cemetery of freedom. A soulless despotism.
A round planet, he says. All human beings have the same right to visit any place on this planet. A common planet. But what happened in our history. The Europeans in the age of colonization. The Japanese didn’t allow them. They didn’t want to become colonized.
Pope asked for forgiveness.

- You have delved into international law now. Where else is your philosophy going?

My philsophy is declining. In these last years, everything went down. My body and my memory, ach. They don't work. It doesn’t become better as we get older. First I did not even think I would come here now, attend this conference. But I know so many people here I want to see again. It's good, but it is too much.

*

[long pause where we just talked]

Arne Næss is still alive?! A fellow once had this idea that [Norwegian philosopher and mountain climber and 96-yr-old] Arne Næss should climb up to the top of a mountain and discuss. But I lost my breath. Did not even get half-way. So then we should discuss over dinner instead, and we both had a glass of red wine and a nice meal and things were good. And so, we should discuss, but Næss grew sleepy and we never got to discuss!

(...)

It's very strange how far apart Habermas and I have grown. He is much closer to the view of Richard Rorty now, which I think is unfortunate. Reading his latest book, there is a homage to Rorty, who died. It appears that there are almost no disagreements between them any more.

I'm heading home after a hectic weekend doing reportage from Melbu in the far North of Norway and going to an in-law-wedding on Karmøy on the West Coast. Now I'm in Haugesund with 3 hours to kill. Any hot tips?

Where I'm Calling From

Well, now. Some startling developments in the past 24 hours.

First off, I'm now in Melbu, on the Hadsel island in the far north of Norway, on a rather hastily put-together assignment. I've never been on assignment for Klassekampen before, and I must say, I'm pretty stoked.

Man it's beautiful up here. This is one of the places you have to see before you die. I'm sitting in my hotel room, waiting for the sun to go down so I can go to sleep, only the sun doesn't set up here this time of year.

Secondly, I'm typing this on my new laptop. Although there have been long moments (days, even) where I have felt happy about not having a computer or internet access at home, most of the time, it's just led to many petty nuisances and practical problems. I'm almost a little ashamed at how much it feels like I'm rejoining the human race. I love finally having a place I can install my own software and customize my settings. I can't wait to have my computer just the way I want it.

The computer is an ASUS gaming model which I bought online. I didn't really realise from the pictures just how much styling there was on it, but it does rather scream "adolescent boy" when you get close to it (Matrix-green details, unnecessary flashing lights when the DirectX is used, glowy bits and bobs). HOWEVER, the hardware looks great, the keyboard is perfect, and the weight to power ratio is really not bad at all. And I got a great deal (I think).

Also, my new Canon is powering up over in the corner. Pictures of Melbu to follow tomorrow.

Fantastic narrated slideshow of beautiful and unsettling black & white photos from Kabul by New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks.

(update: now with link)

Remember back when criticising religious hypocrisy was fun? Before the racists got into the game and started using it as an excuse for beating on the Muslims for oppressing women and being swarthy villains who are a scimitar's edge away from overthrowing Western Civilisation As We Know It within a matter of only a few short years monhts days even for absolute certain I mean it's only a matter of demographics and also establishing an Islamic caliphate in Germany and Norway and Denmark possibly Sweden and making the burqa mandatory and establishing sharia law the islamofascist thugs and also leaving nuclear bombs in Times Square, Las Vegas, etc. so we really really have to torture them even though we absolutely don't want to I mean circumstances simply demand it in fact it would be wrong not to torture them?

I was thinking about this today, for a variety of reasons, some of which you can read in tomorrow's paper, if you're Norwegian.

Anyway, a reminder of those halcyon days before the deluge of brown quasi-fascist sludge that soils our newspapers these days: Bertrand Russell's "Why I'm Not a Christian". There are heaps and heaps of problems with the essay, but he gets in some good points, I think.

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

"It's something they use in coal-mining, father"*

Min far, Peter Larsen, har skrevet et essay** om journalisters selvbilde.

I MEDIENE er det etter hvert blitt jaktsesong for statsråder året rundt. I februar måtte barne- og likestillingsminister Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen gå. For to uker siden kom turen til olje- og energiminister Åslaug Haga. Ha det, ha det. Hurtig videre. Hvem blir den neste?

De som blir felt, mottar gjerne støtteerklæringer og trøstende ord fra nær og fjern. Ingen tenker derimot på de egentlige taperne, på dem som virkelig trenger sympati og omsorg i en vanskelig situasjon: Nyhetsjournalistene i VG og Dagbladet og NRK og TV 2.

RITUELL STATSRÅDSJAKT annenhver måned, og «gravende» journalistikk og sensasjonelle avsløringer annenhver dag, er jo i realiteten et symptom på at selve yrket er i dyp krise. Hver VG-forside og hver «politisk kommentar» på TV 2 er egentlig et skrik om hjelp fra journalister i nød.

Det er blitt stadig vanskeligere å være nyhetsjournalist i de store mediene. Lønnen er visstnok utmerket. Men tenk på skammen, tenk på stigmatiseringen, tenk på den sosiale utstøtelsen som følger med. Ville du ønske at din egen sønn eller datter ble journalist? Nei, vel? (min.uthv.)

Far, det er bare et sommervikariat, hvor mange ganger må jeg si det? Må vi ta denne diskusjonen i offentligheten? Jeg bor i Oslo*** og jobber i avis.**** Det må du lære deg å akseptere.

* "Good! good? What do you know about it? What do you know about getting up at five o'clock in t'morning to fly to Paris... back at the Old Vic for drinks at twelve, sweating the day through press interviews, television interviews and getting back here at ten to wrestle with the problem of a homosexual nymphomaniac drug-addict involved in the ritual murder of a well known Scottish footballer. That's a full working day, lad, and don't you forget it!"
** "medieviter og essayist", står det.
*** "He never calls, he never writes..."
**** (Og er helt enig med deg.)

Og forresten så diskuterer man to av Litlives seneste anmeldelser hos Tue Andersen Nexø i Sandkassen.

New scenes from Metropolis have been found, according to Die Zeit.

– En humanistisk sekt

Kjell Horn er sønn av Kristian Horn som grunnla Human-Etisk Forbund (HEF) og var aktiv i organisasjonen fra dens stiftelse til 1987. Han gir nå ut boken «Svik - fra humanetikk til humanisme».

Boken er et kraftig angrep mot linjen han mener HEF har ført siden Levi Fragell ble styreleder i 1976. Han mener at forbundet under Fragells ledelse har begynt å likne mer på en «sekt».

(MGL, Klassekampen, 06.07.08)

A few days ago, I found myself in the unlikely situation of sitting by candlelight at midnight in an allotment garden which we are borrowing from one of R's colleagues, arguing for ensuring Norwegian food security through farm subsidies because of something that happened in Siberia in 1908. In fact, it turns out that the Tunguska event had just had it's first centennial. When my head cleared the following morning, it struck me that my argument was not entirely sound, since food security is already incorporated into the agricultural budget to the tune of - IIRC - only 10 or 12 %.

Anyway, another cool thing which came up was Norman Borlaug. Don't know who he was? That's ok. He only saved the lives of a billion people.

Ap-streker

Gårsdagens tekst fra Klassekampen. Tror at det er skjedd noe rart med linjeskiftene, men men.

VI HAVNA PÅ...

... Trond Giskes sommerferie-pressekonferanse på utestedet Stratos. Stratos ligger i øverste etasje i det som en gang var Oslos operahus i folketeateret på Youngstorget. Nå er det politikken som er folketeateret, og konferansen er innendørs i solsteiken, for det blåser på toppene.

Giske bestikker journalistene med is og jordbær, men det er for tidlig på dagen for den slags for Klassekampen. Før herligheten begynner er det kunstnerisk innslag fra andreåret på Teaterhøyskolen. De spiller utdrag fra forestillingen «Jungelboken» («det er symbolsk på hvordan det er i politikken», sier Giske til Pressen, og blir møtt med et kollektivt steinansikt).

Inn kommer pelskledde skuespillere og går amok i pressens midte. Det synges og danses lystig, og det hele er absurd og karnevalsk. Apene frastjeler journalistene vesker, notatblokker og kameraer og forsøker å mate Giske med banan. Ordspill på Ap og ape kastes rundt.

Som i karnevalet blir kongen tigger, høyt blir lavt, og Trond Giske sitter plutselig med VG TVs videokamera og filmer vrikkende aper. Klassekampen har havnet i utkanten av flokken, i den verste solsteiken på en stadig klammere barkrakk. Foran oss ser man kun en vegg av pressefolk og får fra vårt synspunkt inntrykk av at de grynter som en apeflokk. Vi prøver iherdig å unngå å lese dette som noe symbolsk.

Vi forstår det ellers slik at Baloo er en bjørn som tar ting som det kommer, og når Mowgli spør hva han har lyst til å gjøre i dag er svaret selvsagt «absolutt ingenting».

Uventet nok er det ingen som spør Trond Giske om dette er arbeidsmoral og verdier han identifiserer seg med, selv om Powerpointpresentasjonen starter med et bilde av en ung kvinne som ligger i grønne enger. Nå skal han vise at han har gjort noe i år.

Giske springløper gjennom Powerpointpresentasjonen med årets og regjeringsperiodens greatest hits. Det går bra med kulturen. Det går strålende, faktisk.

Og det kan man jo vanskelig være uenig i, egentlig. Jeg skulle ønske at jeg kunne være vaktbikkjemedia, og stabburjeger, for det føles mye bedre for selvbildet enn å gi applaus til statsråder. Men jeg har faktisk ikke lyst til å velte Giske. Han er den beste kulturministeren på lenge. Ingen tvil om det, med mindre man er i opposisjon. Og Giske vil ikke flytte departement, sier han.

Bevismaterialet strømmer på: kulturløftet er i rute, sier Giske. Over en milliard mer til kultur har det blitt plass til («et paradigmeskifte innen kultur», sier han, og slutter seg derved til hærskaren av folk som misbruker det begrepet). Storsatsning på lokal kultur i kommunene også.

Utredningene har også kommet på løpende bånd, og står utstilt til høyre for Giske som fargerike, forlokkende produkter. Departementet har utredet kunstnerkår, kunstbyråkratiet, språk, scenekunst, den kulturelle skolesekken, dataspill, stat og kirke, m.m.

Ellers har Giske også fått til en rekke nye praktinstitusjoner som Dansens Hus, Norsk Filminstitutt og Operaen som juvelen i kronen. «300.000 har besøkt det nye bygget», sier statsråden. Og 50.000 har vært innenfor, og ikke bare vandret på taket.

Ellers har det vært økning i litteratursalg, norsk film har en fjerdedel av markedsandelen for første gang, festivalene har 100.000 flere besøkende og går kun sjeldent konkurs, og mangfold har funnet sted.

Høstplanen til Giske blir også ambisiøs. Regjeringen skal utforme politikk på grunnlag av de nevnte utredningene. Nye meldinger skal det også bli: Biblioteksmeldingen skal utrede hva biblioteket skal være i Googles tidsalder, og digitaliseringsmeldingen, 8 år for sein, skal utrede hva resten av landet skal være i Googles tidsalder. Det er også planer om å digitalisere tidligere tiders norsk kultur.

I motsetning til resten av regjeringen skal kulturdepartementet tilsynelatende også ha en nordområdepolitkk som ikke bare består av turisme og vindkraft. Til bilder av sjarker og fiskevær forteller Giske at han nylig har innledet et norsk-russisk kultursamarbeid. Kultur på vintergrønne vidder neste.

(Klassekampen, 03.07.08)

Kunstnerne blir fattigere, undertegnede blir (litt) rikere

Jeg jobber som sommervikar i Klassekampen denne måneden og et par uker i august. Jeg tar med glede imot tips og kommentarer både her på bloggen, i kommentarfeltet, og per mail,

martin punktum gruner punktum larsen
alfakrøll
klassekampen punktum no

eller telefon,

ni åtte seks
to null
fire seks åtte.

Gårsdagens tekst ligger på nett her: Kunstnerne blir fattigere.

Det var langt fra hyggelig lesning han kunne presentere i går, forsker Knut Løyland. I går la nemlig Telemarksforskning fram rapporten «Kunstnernes aktivitet, arbeids- og inntektsforhold, 2006» for kulturminister Trond Giske, og den forteller om dårlige lønnsforhold og store kjønnsforskjeller, også på kunstfeltet.

Rapporten, som var bestilt som en del av den rødgrønne regjeringens kulturløft, viser tydelig at det blir stadig flere kunstnere i Norge, men at de i liten grad deltar i den lønnsøkningen resten av samfunnet har hatt glede av de siste årene.

Undersøkelsen som kartlegger norske kunstneres økonomiske vilkår og aktivitetsnivå, er den første i sitt slag siden 1993. I løpet av de 15 årene som har gått mellom de to levekårsundersøkelsene, har det vært en stor økning i antall kunstnere, ca. 30-40 prosent.

What if we start simulated shootings instead. Would that be okay?

Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded for science. He says the same as everyone who has undergone it says: yes, it really is torture. To which we all say: duh, dumbass. Of course controlled drowning is torture, just as any simulated execution is torture. Simulated execution, I think, we can all get together on that being torture, right?

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

The answer is fifteen seconds. There's a video.

found poem

From my spam filter this morning:

euphrosyne extractive erotomania
enphytotic etc/phones ensoulment
fLsavehist euonymuses fLsavehist
ergosterol eudiometry examenyear

Crash & burn

"Being shot down in a fighter plane is not a qualification for being president" says Wesley Clark.

Gasp! Shock! Horror!

Fortunately, there's sensible people talking, too.

The world has gone mad. Showing personal courage (which McCain has done, indisputably) is a good thing, but it's manifestly not a direct qualification to being president. It can be a tool for gauging character, but then again, it might not - Lincoln and Roosevelt, for instance, didn't serve in the military. "Swiftboating"? C'mon.

Litlive #58 ute nå!

Nytt nummer av Litlive kom ut i går kveld. Det er et spennende nummer, synes jeg, som går inn i flere interessante litteraturdebatter. Som en kuriosa ser vi at den danske kritikeren og bloggeren Tue Andersen Nexø nevnes i sjokkerende mange artikler. Vi i redaksjonen oppmuntrer til at han nevnes minst en gang hvert nummer.

Without further ado:

I Litlive #58 skriver René Jean Jensen om Abo Rasuls Unfun, Lars Bukdahl om Nina Søs Vinthers Hvis Helsinki, Kari Løvaas om Pablo Llambías’ … rasende … og Sissel Lie om Hélène Cixous’ Gull – breva frå far min.

Det er ikke så mye som skjer i juli måned, men Litlives kalender oppdatert med enkelte litteraturarrangementer i henholdsvis Norge, Sverige og Danmark. Savner du et arrangement i kalenderen, eller har du tips om kommende arrangementer, er du mer enn velkommen til å sende en mail til litlive@litlive.dk.

Vi ønsker alle våre lesere en god sommer!

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