Longish article on the last days of still-president Bush

Det går bra - hvorfor?

En meningsmåling i Dagbladet i dag viser endelig framgang for de rødgrønne, Ap går solidt fram, Frp går holder seg stabilt og SV går fram for første gang på lenge. Frp er ikke lenger Norges største parti og selv om de rødgrønne stadig ikke har regjeringsgrunnlag, så er de i alle fall på vei. Det er den første indikasjonen på lenge på at de rød-grønne faktisk kan vinne valget igjen.

Men det jeg lurer på er hva som forårsaker endringen. Frp har hatt vanvittig mye eksponering i sommer, og har ikke gjort noen store bommerter som jeg kan tenke på (den største jeg kommer på i farten: Klassekampen klarte etter mange minutter med gravende journalistikk å avdekke en uenighet innad i Frp når det gjaldt et mindre kulturpolitisk poneg). Og de rød-grønne har ikke gjort noen voldsomme kast i sommer de heller, som jeg kommer på. Hvis det stemmer må det være en endring i kommunikasjonsstrategi som er årsaken, og det tør jeg ikke helt tro på før noe klarer å overbevise meg. Noen tanker der ute?

Hvori undertegnede gjøres narr av

Jeg hadde den ære å være i På Teppet i går:

Språkmektig

Bilagets kultursider kunne i går skryte av at Klassekampen snakket med [Per] Petterson, som for tiden nyter enorm suksess i utlandet, på 40 språk.

En kan levende forestille seg at bilagets halvdanske utsendte Martin Grüner Larsen kunne føre en samtale på ett og et halvt språk med halvdanske Per Petterson. Men 40 språk, a gitt?

Jeg kan jævlig mange språk skal jeg si dere, men kommaregler er jeg dårlig til. Heng ham ikke vent til jeg, komma.

I prefer Michael Palin, myself. More cosmopolitan.

I don't know if this analysis by Ezra Klein of McCain's vice-presidential choice of Sarah Palin is accurate, but I hope it gets a lot of play, because it's convincing. The "he's trying to look cool"-angle is great. It makes McCain look like one of those really old teachers who get the kid's slang wrong trying to "reach out to them". Good narrative for the Obama campaign:

This was, for McCain, a major decision. And we can learn from it. And here's what even his supporters must admit: Country did not come first. Polls did. The calculations are fully transparent. Understanding that he needed to broaden his electoral coalition, he picked a woman. Understanding he needed youth, he picked a young politician. Understanding he needed to emphasize his reformist credentials, he picked a onetime whistleblower. What he didn't pick was anyone able to help him govern, or capable of stepping forward in a moment of crisis. Palin is not an experienced foreign policy hand like Lieberman or a successful and experienced governor like Tommy Thompson. Today, McCain chose his campaign over his presidency. Over our presidency. Palin seems like a promising young politician, but McCain increasingly seems like a desperate one.

That having been said, I was kinda underwhelmed by Obama's speech at the convention. He gorged on a whole bunch of silly tropes he'd been sensible enough throughout the rest of the campaign to use sparingly. It just seemed too over-the-top to me.

And there was way too much emphasis on the military, Georgia and Israel for me to feel entirely comfortable. Also: you might not have heard the dog-whistle, but he was talking about doing military operations against Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, which means going into Pakistan. That's very troubling.

Update: although, when I think about it, he's finally putting some policy ideas more widely into the field, which is probably what his campaign needs at this point. Or maybe it's just my blood sugar talking. Who knows?

Baghdad, apparently, isn't really the best place to be gay right around now. As usual, Kate Bush broke the news first, back in the late 1970s.

Oh, and a quick note to the Iraqi rapists who are raping gay men for being gay: if you are really serious about how sodomy is an unnatural sin, you might want to turn down the sodomy a little?

Bjørnson, Harstad, Henriksen & moi

For de av dere som skal på Bjørnsonfestivalen så kommer jeg til å være programleder for to programposter der oppe:

Fredag 29. august kl. 1100
Frokost med en fremmed.
Levi Henriksen i samtale med Martin Grüner Larsen.
(Levi Henriksen er aktuell med Like østenfor regnet, en roman.)
Teatersalongen. Gratis.

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Lørdag 30. august Kl. 1100
Frokost med en fremmed.
Johan Harstad i samtale med Martin Grüner Larsen.
(Harstad er aktuell med dramasamlingen B-sider og ungdomssciencefictionromanen Darlah som Harstad snakker om her, i tillegg til at Hässelby stadig er ganske ny og at Buzz Aldrin osv. skal bli film)
Teatersalongen. Gratis.

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Nevnte jeg at det er gratis? Free fucking gratis, som Al Swearengen ville sagt. Jeg er i Molde fra torsdag kveld til søndag morgen. Si hei om du er der.

Oppspinndoktor

Her er en Fokus-sak jeg skrev til dagens Klassekampen:

Fortellingen om valgkampen er valgkampen

Alle elsker en god historie: Et utsagn som er så selvinnlysende at det umulig kan diskuteres. Nevrologisk er hjernene våre skrudd sammen slik at de forstår verden gjennom fortellingen.

Politikk er intet unntak. Det kan både regjeringens spinndoktorer og kognitive lingvister som George Lakoff skrive under på. Politikk avhenger av å skape forståelige fortellinger, og politisk retorikk er det som skaper fortellinger om saken, partiet eller kandidaten. Om du tviler på om dette er sant, anbefaler jeg dekningen av Demokratenes historiefortellingskongress i Denver denne uken.

Det er noe grotesk og overdimensjonert over det å drive valgkamp for 300 millioner mennesker, som setter noen grunnleggende aspekter ved hva politikk i demokratier er, i skarpt fokus.

Etter en røff sommer prøver Demokratenes presidentkandidat Barack Obama å tette igjen hullene i fortellingen om seg selv. Hans forsprang på meningsmålingene er nå - grøss og gru - nede i et snevert to-prosents gap mellom ham og John McCain. Noe må gjøres.

Så hva er historien som spinnes om Barack Obama? Første hovedtaler i går var den dødelig kreftsyke senatoren Edward Kennedy, John F. Kennedys lillebror, som talte så ikke et øye var tørt. Selv om han snakket om helsereform, og lovet å dedikere sine siste måneder til den saken, var det lite politisk substans i talen, som heller handlet om fraser som «å gi fakkelen videre» og «drømmen lever videre».

Senatorens niese Caroline Kennedy var langt mindre subtil i tittelen på en kronikk i New York Times i januar: «A President Like My Father».

Da arven fra Kennedy var sikret, kom Michelle Obama på scenen og holdt en 20 minutter lang tale om sin egen og Barack Obamas bakgrunn. Det viste seg her at Michelle Obama har en familie. Hun har både en bror, en mor og ikke minst en far. Og så er hun en kone. Hun er nemlig gift - med Barack Obama. Og hennes far kom fra arbeiderklassen. Og selv om Obama var litt fremmed - han «hadde et rart navn» og «kom fra den andre siden av landet» - så var han akkurat som hun selv var.

Altså: a) Selv om Obama er litt fremmed og litt rar (må jeg stave det for dere? Han er svart), så er han egentlig akkurat som alle andre amerikanere. b) Han viderefører John F. Kennedys arv.

Dette er bare to sterke elementer i historiefortellingen som demokratene bygger opp rundt Obama. Men fortellingene må også utkjempes retorisk, mot motstanderens omdefineringsforsøk.

De siste dagene har Demokratene laget riper i lakken i McCains krigsheltfortelling. De må ha velsignet dagen han plumpet ut med at han ikke var helt sikker på hvor mange hus han eier (mellom sju og ti, faktisk. De lærde strides). Siden da har «McCain er ikke i kontakt med vanlige amerikanere» vært historien, sammen med «McCain=Bush» («McSame»).

Det som blir tydelig i norsk politikk i lys av dette, er at våre valgkamper er like historiedrevne. Hos oss er det takk og lov mindre fokus på person, men desto flere fortellinger om partier og velgergrupper.

I 2005 klarte de rødgrønne å surfe inn i regjeringskvartalet på bølgene til en fortelling om at det står dårlig til i Norge, og nå skulle Norge forandres. «Change», ikke sant? Som alltid kom hverdagen tilbake for raskt og nå er en ny fortelling på plass: De rødgrønne er ikke i kontakt med det norske folk og deres reformer mislykkes.

Selv om den rødgrønne regjeringen ikke har levert, er det fascinerende å se hvordan en middels god regjering som ikke klarer seg så verst har blitt omdefinert. Om venstresida skal vinne en ny valgseier i 2009 må det først og fremst skapes en ny politikk. Men politikken må også tillegges en ny fortelling. Kan vi det? Yes, we kanskje.

Terror-Støre sjokk-smart på nett-video!

Det går visst faktisk an å ha et fornuftig terrorsyn selv om man er toppolitiker:



Andre biter av intervjuet her og her. Og det som jeg antar er en tekstversjon her. Skulle gjerne sett hele om noen vet hvor man finner det. Kan ikke se det på Le Mondes nettsider.

You know you've run a bad government when people just put up a list of stuff you did to campaign against you.

Top-secret professional translating trick of the trade:

if you're translating something, and you come upon a technical word or a noun which you don't understand, or can't remember what is in the language you're translating into, go to the Wikipedia page for that word (if it's English, such a page almost invariably exists) and check the list of available languages for that article. It's in the bottom left corner. If the language you're translating into is there, you will most likely either have your word, or the article will contain the word you're looking for.

I vote for the name "Sandalgate". Can we call it "Sandalgate"? How about "John McCain is most likely a big fat liar-gate"?

Osama Bin Biden

Am I the first to come up with that? I'm not the first to come up with that? Well, at least he's got a big mouth.

Bourdieu, baby.

Love song for the internet age

I've been there:

(Amanda Palmer: "I Google You")

Long, detailed article on Obama's views on the economy. Interesting reading.

Green Mosh Pits

A fun idea for sustainable energy capture: recycle the energy of people dancing. It's actually not a stupid idea. Dancing releases a lot of kinetic energy into the floor, and if you know a lot of people are going to be moving around, you can rig up induction pads to get them to, say, power the lights where they are. You could probably do something like this in lots of places - roads, maybe? You'd just have to have some method of putting the power back into circulation.

the floor will have a give of one centimeter, enough to generate 5 to 10 watts of electricity per dancer. SDC estimates the eco-club will require about 2,000 people moving at once to keep the place bright.

The move isn't one born purely of ecological altruism. Even as environmentalists are better known for tree-hugging asceticism than night club hedonism, the Dutch are -- like most Europeans these days -- anxious to do their part for the environment. A survey conducted by SDC last year found that fully 66 percent of Dutch clubbers would be willing to dig deeper into their wallets for a green night out. Enviu -- which is also helping the port in Rotterdam, Europe's largest, reduce its emissions -- could do worse than starting in the clubbing capital of the Netherlands. Over 10,000 people go out in the city each weekend.

In a more serious vein, here's a concise and sensible plan for making electric cars viable.

(via metafilter)

Verdens raskeste demonstrasjonstog [pdf]. Man møter opp på Nationaltheatret t-banestasjon 4. september kl 10.30 og så løper man til Stortinget. Saken? Krav om bygging av lyntog, selvsagt.

Forresten: Kan vi ikke alle sammen være enige om at fullfinansiering av kollektivtrafikk i storbyer er et mål for de rødgrønne i neste valgkamp?

Really interesting lecture by Cory Doctorow

He talks about the information economy: copyright, group forming, encryption. He's an incredibly smart thinker and activist on the internet:

WTF? ZOMG!!1! MST3K FTW!

Update: Now with link. I'm a N0ob!

Shädy Äcres kaster seg inn i pålegg's debatten.

Renaissance manuscripts that have been LOLcatted? Clearly the LOLcat thing has jumped the LOLrus.

A slogan we can all get behind, courtesy of the fine folks at the Edge of the American West (see sidebar).

Isaac Hayes is dead. Bummer. I'd like to remember him more for writing "Soul Man" than for doing "Theme from Shaft". Not that "Theme from Shaft" isn't good fun, though. Awesome lyrics:

"He's a complicated man
- but no one understands him but his woman.
(JOHN SHAFT!)"

On. My. Mind.

Obviously, I'm intensely concerned about the fighting in Georgia. It's war and I categorically don't like it, but it's my next-door-neighbour involved in major combat operations that have obvious imperial motives. That's uncomfortable. An op-ed piece in today's Aftenposten (a Norwegian paper) talked about how we can better understand now the rush the Baltic states had in entering the EU and NATO. If there is one thing this war is making clear, it is that Russia is a country that is not to be trusted as an international player. If we were paying attention in Chechnya, we already knew that, but this war if anything makes it clearer.

I haven't really been paying attention to Easter Europe/Western Asia for a good long while, so I have to admit this caught me unaware. Fortunately I happened to wind up at a dinner day before yesterday where one of the guests had just stepped off the plane from Tbilisi and the other had recently travelled in Abkhazia recently. Now I'm in the process of reading up on what's happening, and here are some of the things I'm reading:

Wikipedia already has a thorough article on what they are calling the 2008 South Ossetia War. Press "refresh" frequently. Depressing aside: Wikipedia has an icon specifically for articles on ongoing warfare.

A Fistful of Euros has some really interesting coverage, with one of their contributors actually in Tbilisi. The comments on their posts seem to be drawing a lot of really unpleasant English-speaking Russian nationalists, but the debates are still good.

This post in particular cleared up the tactical situation a lot:

South Ossetia has always been vulnerable to a blitzkrieg attack. It’s small, it’s not very populous (~70,000 people), and it’s surrounded by Georgia on three sides. It’s very rugged and mountainous, yes, but it’s not suited to defense in depth. There’s only one town of any size (Tsikhinvali, the capital) and only one decent road connecting the province with Russia.

That last point bears emphasizing. There’s just one road, and it goes through a tunnel. There are a couple of crappy roads over the high passes, but they’re in dreadful condition; they can’t support heavy equipment, and are closed by snow from September to May. Strategically, South Ossetia dangles by that single thread.

So, there was always this temptation: a fast determined offensive could capture Tsikhinvali, blow up or block the tunnel, close the road, and then sit tight. If it worked, the Russians would then be in a very tricky spot: yes, they outnumber the Georgians 20 to 1, but they’d have to either drop in by air or attack over some very high, nasty mountains. This seems to be what the Georgians are trying to do: attack fast and hard, grab Tsikhinvali, and close the road.

And this one is very unpleasant:

Russia has no reason to do that unless it’s gunning for regime change. Attacking Gori is right at the bleeding edge of plausible self-defense; Gori is near the border, and has been the forward base for Georgian operations in South Ossetia. But going beyond Gori, landing forces on the Georgian coast, or attacking in force out of Abkhazia, would be something else again.

There are undoubtedly plenty of people in Moscow who’d like to try. Russia’s leaders view Saakashvili as obnoxious and dangerous: for American readers, it’s sort of like how conservative Republicans feel about Fidel Castro. You know how, for fifty years now, a certain minority of Americans have entertained fantasies about landing in Havana and slamming that sonofabitch up against the wall? Like that. Except the Russians have the power to actually do it.

And here's another piece in The Guardian called "The War that Russia Wants".

In recent years, the Kremlin had escalated its interference in Georgia's territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - bombing Georgian territory twice last year, illegally extending Russian citizenship to residents there, and appointing Russian security officers to their self-declared governments. South Ossetia's government in particular is practically under Moscow's direct control, with little if any ability to act independently.

But this flare-up is a direct consequence of Russia's deliberate and recent efforts to engage its small neighbor in military conflict. In April, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed a decree effectively beginning to treat Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of the Russian Federation. This land grab was a particularly galling move because Russia is in charge of both the peacekeeping operations in the conflict zones, and the negotiations over their political resolution. The mediator had now clearly become a direct party to the conflict.

Also see this Fistful of Euros piece on the "retro" feel of the war. I understand what they mean. This war feels more understandable than most wars these days, in some sense.

Tblisi is being bombed.

There's some heavy-duty dog-whistle politics in the latest John McCain ad. Slacktivist has a great analysis which I think is right on the money. Basically the ad is saying that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Seriously. I heard the dog-whistle, and I've only read a couple of articles on the Left Behind Series.

Asshole of the Day

The winner of the (...) Asshole of the Day award was the guy who thought up the idea that Russia should invade South Ossetia on the day of the Olympics in Beijing to avoid too much negative coverage. I know that there was some guy out there whose job it was to map out that vile little media strategy. That guy, and I'm sure he sleeps wonderfully at night, is subhuman scum whom I would gladly spit on.

That is all.

Orwell's diaries are starting to be blogged tomorrow. They're going to run for three years. I'm a huge fan of Orwell's essays - I've previously referred in several places to his columns as a pseudoblog, or characteristic of what I take to be the mode of writing which blogs are really conducive for. This should be interesting reading.

"Og det er vel passende å spørre, hvordan er du imponert?"
NRK-kommentator

Kung Pao et Circe

The takeaway conclusion from this year's Olympic opening ceremony? You can really put on quite a show if you don't have freedom of speech and are willing to spend truckloads and truckloads of money you could be spending on, say, rural infrastructure, sustainable growth or healthcare.

Also, Edward Said is spinning in his grave like a propeller

Til den helt store gullmedaljen

Jeg sitter og ser på OL-åpningen. Og jeg vil bare stanse opp og dele noen sitater med dere:

"Og her ser vi da et bevegelig tastatur, som var noe kineserne oppfant lenge før vi i Vesten."
- Kommentatoren på OL-åpningen oversetter "moveable type" på direkten fra et engelskspråklig dokument.

"De var tidlig ute med det meste, kineserne. Her ser vi en drage, eller "kite" som det også heter."
- Samme OL-kommentator direkteoversetter stadig fra manus.

"Og nå danser representanter fra alle Kinas 56 etniske grupper rundt i stadion... Inkludert Tibet."
- Samme OL-kommentator direkteoversetter fremdeles fra manus.

Paris Hilton Responds to John McCain's "Obama's a celebrity"-ad. I have to say, this is pretty fucking funny. Hearing Paris Hilton lay out her energy policy created some serious cognitive dissonance for me.

War or Car? looks into what the US with the money spent in Iraq, if one had chosen not to go to war. My three favourites:

- Cover Vermont and New Hampshire in gold leaf.
- Buy a Toyota Prius for every US household.
- Keep the entire Irish people in Guinness for a millenium.

Two great posts at Crooked Timberrrr on the changing rhetoric of the McCain campaign. First off: Obama is a black, sexually aggressive man with a really big dick and he's coming for your blonde aryan daughters. Second, Obama is, in fact, the Antichrist. I thought I was getting that Left Behind-feeling out of that last video.

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My back is finally starting to get better, so I might actually get some honest work done today. I'll tell you this, though: nothing improves the standing posture like lower back pain.

Kieran Healy and Ezter Hargittai over at Crooked Timber play Conference Bingo! It's like bullshit bingo, only for conferences. The funny thing is, I just came back from that media conference gig in Stockholm and I swear, it's all true. Big conferences are inevitably like a David Lodge novel.

The face of trolls. An excellent NY Times Magazine article on trolls. Actual interviews with trolls included. They are exactly who you think they are, as it turns out. Sad men in dark rooms with stunted emotional lives.

On an Alan Moore-related tangent: note the Guy Fawkes mask in the background of the troll shot. As it turns out, even assholes like Alan Moore.

I'm filled with love for the US progressive intellectual blogosphere. There's so much quality stuff going around. I can't really link to all the good stuff, but there's interesting articles and posts every day. Here are two posts I noticed today.

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The Edge of the American West has an essay on Hiroshima.

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Firedoglake looks into the anthrax investigation with the journalistic depth and skill which has become that blog's hallmark.

"This groove is out of fashion, these beats are twenty years old"

David Byrne & Brian Eno have released the first single from their upcoming album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. It's a free download against registration (they'll send you a mail when the album comes out). They still sound good. I'm looking forward to the album.

The answer is yes, yes I did. Why? Because I rock. Also: soft eyes, people.

Kafka's Dick: Breaking News

Gasp! Shock! Kafka had a dick! Of course, we didn't know this already, so this shocking new information is set to completely fail to change absolutely everything we knew about Kafka.

For me, the money shot in the article was the following paragraph:

Even today, the pornography would be "on the top shelf", Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. "These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant. [emph.mine]"

Yes, because girl-on-girl action (for the lesbians among you: may know this as "having sex" or "making love") is simply dis-gusting, isn't it? Ick. It's quite unpleasant. Indeed. Homosexuality: it's completely the same as animal sex.

Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition).

And number 6 on our list of priorities is...

A site I really like is WikiHow. It's like Wikipedia, but for things that you can do. It's basically a place where people share techniques for accomplishing anything from hacking a coke machine to escaping from handcuffs to washing windows (that's what I was looking for this time - I'm washing my windows and wondered if there wasn't some way of making it easier. Answer: not really).

Anyway, The list of most popular pages on WikiHow is immensely entertaining reading and not a little sad.

1. Main Page ‎(32,542,616 views)
2. Categories ‎(2,826,660 views)
3. French Kiss ‎(2,215,807 views)
4. Get Six Pack Abs ‎(2,078,210 views)
5. Lose Weight Fast ‎(1,814,553 views)
6. Love ‎(1,748,584 views)
7. Draw Graffiti Names ‎(1,032,296 views)
8. Use Peter Answers ‎(1,022,066 views)
9. Kiss ‎(989,762 views)

Tescos invades Denmark.

Daniel Davies has a killer post over at Crooked Timber. He puts to death the old hobbyhorse of scorched-earth capitalists that companies have a responsibility to the shareholders to maximise profits. Whenever people say this, I scream at the top of my lungs that they have to act like people first, goddamnit:

And at this point, of course, the Davies-Folk Theorem kicks in; if you allow strategic and reputational issues to be given weight in managerial decisions, then it is very hard indeed to think of something that can’t be justified as being in the best interests of maximising shareholder value over the long term. Paying above-market wages? Efficiency wage argument, maximises shareholder value. Donating to charity? Part of the marketing budget, don’tcha know. Voluntarily refusing to sell violent video games to children? Forestalls the danger of much more punitive government regulation down the line. Etc etc. It’s pretty much accepted that if the Dodge vs Ford case (which is more or less the basis of the view that directors’ common law fiduciary duty of care implies an obligation to maximise equity value) came to court tomorrow, it would be a pretty shoddy legal team that couldn’t win it for Henry Ford.

In real life, the business judgement rule protects more or less anything that the Creative Capitalism gang might want businesses to do. Even the paradigm example used by Posner – of a corporate chief executive making charitable donations and specifically saying that they weren’t doing it for PR purposes and that they didn’t run the company in the interests of the shareholders – doesn’t actually necessarily give rise to a situation which would fail the business judgement test, because that’s pretty much the story of Body Shop, and if the only way that a company can secure the services of a talented and energetic cosmetics executive like Anita Roddick is to give away money without regard for shareholders, then that’s in the interests of shareholders. There is, of course, a cottage industry in business school cases and the funnies pages of the Economist in proving that instances of corporate philanthropy are actually in the interests of shareholders in the long term.

Al-Klassekampen – en oppsummering

Allright. Nå som jeg er ferdig med denne sommerens vikariat i terrorisme-støttende, vestlig-hatende, islamososialistiskfascistiske, gulag-spredende, homsehetsende/homse-støttende-på-bekostning-av-demokratiet-som-vi-kjenner-det (og Nina Karin Monsens blodtrykk) Al-Klassekampen, så er det på tide med en oppsummering og lenkesamling. Jeg orker ikke å lage dette i kronologisk rekkefølge nå. Kanskje seinere. Ikke alle mine artikler er tilgjengelig på nett, dessverre.

LEDER, 28. juli, om diasporaens bruk av medier til politisk aktivisme.

"Diasporaen, altså den delen av en etnisk gruppe som har utvandret fra sitt tradisjonelle territorium, er i stadig større grad blitt en politisk maktfaktor man må regne med. Denne utviklingen er først og fremst drevet av teknologi. Økt tilgjengelighet av telefontjenester og særlig internettkonnektivitet i utviklingsland har ført til en dramatisk økning i kontakt mellom de utvandrete og de gjenværende. I tillegg har diasporaen nå en massedistribusjonskanal rett inn i sitt hjemland gjennom bruk av fenomener som blogging, diskusjonsfora på nett og masse-e-poster."

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LEDER, 30. juli om lokalavissaken.

"Som alltid ellers er det også en direkte konflikt mellom journalistisk kvalitet og profittkrav: Ole Petter Pedersen, redaktør i Driva, nevnte i en kronikk i Klassekampen i forgårs at tidspress på de ansatte var et problem, og etterlyste færre og bedre saker. Det vil være et viktig skritt på veien mot en bedre lokalpresse, men salgstallene kommer i veien."

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Tar tempen på bloggosfæren
Nettforsker Jill Walker Rettberg gir ut bok om blogging. Hun er optimistisk for mediets framtid.

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Vil OL åpne Kinas porter?
Den kinesiske medieforskeren Zhenggrong Hu mener at OL vil skape et åpnere Kina. Hans kollega Yuezhi Zhao er skeptisk.

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Mediebilder av lidelse
Lilie Chouliaraki forsker på medie-representasjoner av lidelse. Hun bestrider ideen om at teknologien automatisk skaper solidaritet med de lidende.

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- Kenyas medier spredte hat
James Deane fra BBC World Service Trust mener man må lære av medienes rolle i å spre hat under de nylige konfliktene i Kenya.

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Museer på museum
Museet Louisiana i København stiller nå ut andre museer. Utstillingen fokuserer på museumsbygningen som identitetsskaper.

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Bibliotekene ut i gjørma
Bibliotekarer er ikke lenger fornøyde med å vente på at ungdommene skal komme til dem. Nå setter de opp festivaltelt.

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En nyliberal kanon
Tenketanken Res Publica skal lage en artikkelsamling om nyliberalismens teorikanon.

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- Kunstnere må stille krav
Bildekunstner Anders Eiebakke mener kunstnerne må ta politisk ansvar for å bedre sine levekår.

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Kunstnerne blir fattigere
Levekårsundersøkelsen er klar: Norsk kulturliv preges av dårlig økonomi og store kjønnsforskjeller.

Get Your War On: The Animated Series.

"Al-Klassekampen"? Koman igjen. Politisk debatt på olympisk nivå. Kanskje vi bør referere til Document.no som "Das Dokument" eller "Il Ducementa" eller noe sånt? Det er jo ikke rasistisk i det hele tatt.

Debattredaktør Ali Esbati i Klassekampen (som blogger sporadisk her) skriver en knallbra artikkel i Aftonbladet om Frp og de norske tilstander.

”Aw yeah – our understanding of the universe is about to change, yo”

Particle physicists rapping about the Large Hadron Collider? NWA would be so proud. I'm sure they're better at electron flow than, well, you know. And at least they're better than the rapping Wordsworth squirrel.

Axel Bruns has a great reply to Clay Shirky's video "Gin, Television and Social Surplus." Which I talk about here. When I first saw the video I had the feeling that there was something a little wrong with the argument, but that the general gist of it was right. Lately I've seen people criticize the historical accuracy of the role of the gin craze and the passivity he assumes in his argument when people are watching TV. But fundamentally, I think that Shirky is right that some phase shift in the amount of cognitive energy available has happened. Bruns has convinced me even more.