linkage for 11-11-2008

Krugman on Roosevelt, the New Deal and Obama.

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Disturbing, haunting photos from the war in Congo.

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Great op-ed piece by Al Gore on climate change and what the Obama administration can do. I like the ending:

In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The average age of the systems engineers cheering on Apollo 11 from the Houston control room that day was 26, which means that their average age when President Kennedy announced the challenge was 18.

This year similarly saw the rise of young Americans, whose enthusiasm electrified Barack Obama’s campaign. There is little doubt that this same group of energized youth will play an essential role in this project to secure our national future, once again turning seemingly impossible goals into inspiring success.

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Pre-election profiles of Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

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Long piece in the New Yorker on the psychopath. Who is he? Does he even exist? What are the diagnostic criteria? What is happening in their twisted little brains, etc.

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Best article I've seen so far on the financial crash of Iceland.

Overnight, people lost their savings. Prices are soaring. Once-crowded restaurants are almost empty. Banks are rationing foreign currency, and companies are finding it dauntingly difficult to do business abroad. Inflation is at 16 percent and rising. People have stopped traveling overseas. The local currency, the krona, was 65 to the dollar a year ago; now it is 130. Companies are slashing salaries, reducing workers’ hours and, in some instances, embarking on mass layoffs.

“No country has ever crashed as quickly and as badly in peacetime,” said Jon Danielsson, an economist with the London School of Economics.

It contains the mandatory-in-all-articles-about-Nordic-countries mention of Vikings. 

I'm having one of those "There is so Much AWESOME STUFF Being Made in the World" – moments

The reason: 3 visual candy sites I have found in rapid succesion today.

1. ffffound!
Which, apart from having a great name, basically consists of a bunch of people trawling the internet and finding awesome graphics and collecting them on their site. Sort of like the Shädy Äcres image editorial policy, but done by more people and without the text. And they probably smell better, too.

The result is fantastic. A collection of photographs, typography, graphic design, logos, illustrations, etc., etc. And it never stops being interesting. It doesn't stop dropping my jaw. If you only follow one of these links, follow this one.

2. 'Skine Art is a site which contains pages from visual artist's moleskine sketchbooks. Lots of really awesome use of the book's layout.

3. The photographic philosophy of Ryan McGinley (which I ffffound via Ffffound (oh, and probably NSFW depending on where you W)) seems to mostly consist of telling people to get naked and do stuff (though they seem mostly to not be doing what most people would imagine you were talking about if you asked them to get naked and do stuff). The results are captivating and annoyingly youthful and energetic.

The freakiest picture in there is undoubtedly the one of a naked man with his head more or less in a bear's armpit. The bear is in motion, the man seems to stand completely still, while the bear appears to lean on him. C-r-r-eepy.

Covert Economies

Since I am now mainlining The Wire while hearing John McCain - the presumptive Republican nominee for president - talking about how strict sentencing should be and how kids should be tried as adults, and, you know, spreading other good, rational ideas of modern criminology, I thought I should share a couple of links with you. Both are by Stephen "Freakonomics" Levitt and both are on the economic aspects of criminal activities. Which is obviously something we should know as much as possible about.

The first is a lecture he gave based on a chapter in the book Freakonomics. It's called "Why crack dealers live with their mothers". It details some of the findings from a study of an inner-city US crack dealing organisation, based among other things on their accounting books and organisational charts.

The second is "An Empirical Analysis of Street-Level Prostitution" (pdf) which he wrote with Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. Since it's a complete (though not finished) article, it's much more substantial and far more interesting.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Levitt & Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner blog over at the NY Times.

the most unintentionally funny book cover in the history of mankind.

(via Design Observer)

Hey, look! The word weblog is 10 years old today! How do we know? Datestamp. Also, Jill's new book has a cover. In other, weblog-related news, I hope to post Chapter 2 of the Bluffer's Guide to my thesis later tonight or tomorrow morning.

[Update: and by tomorrow morning, I mean later tonight. Real life got in the way.]

Så nettopp Al Gores Nobelforedrag Det er et herlig øyeblikk ca. 4 minutter inne i talen der kamera går ned i publikum, og man ser Carl I. Hagen sitter og ser pottesur ut, og rett bak ham sitter Erik Solheim og gliser.

Lately, every time I've made tea, I've thought of George Orwell.

No comment.

Oddly moving fact: there are only 5 surviving veterans of WWI left in Britain. They're all older than 106. Strange how that historical catastrophe keeps afflicting the present, while the actual participants are going extinct.

We are one messed-up little species.

Waterboarders & Freeloaders

Here's a couple of resources on the totally humane non-torture or at the very least kinder, gentler torture that our allies are doing: Waterboarding.org and the blogpost "Waterboarding is torture... period."

What's the definition of terrorism again? Wanting to subvert democratic values through killing and inflicting pain and suffering?

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Data on the sales record of In Rainbows is now available online. It turns out there was a far higher percentage of freeloaders than expected. Being a senseless optimist, I feel that I should point out that Radiohead is a huge band with a huge following. If they were a small, local band doing the same thing, I suspect the number of people who would pay would go up dramatically. But then again, I also believe that mankind is not born inherently evil, so what do I know?

In [his role as member of the Ulster Defence Association] he became embroiled in a number of the violent feuds which have convulsed the UDA in recent years. Regarded as a moderate in UDA terms, he found himself on the opposite side of the argument to more extreme figures such as Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair. On one occasion, Duddy's home was attacked with a pipe bomb, while on another shots were fired into it. While he was uninjured, his pet chihuahua, Bambi, was hit by gunfire and died.

Sammy Duddy: Belfast paramilitary and drag artist. Born Belfast 1945; twice married; died Belfast 17 October 2007.

Not a joke.

And after the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, now for some really important news: it turns out that Albus Dumbledore is gay. And I don't mean cheerful.

The funny thing is, this actually occured to me in the last book. It struck me that the relationship Dumbledore had to Grindelwald was actually a pretty sneaky depiction of a youthful crush. I guess that a boarding school that big would have to have some homosexuality in it.

And just think: fanfic writers the world over are working themselves into a lather as we speak. It's christmas morning for them.

im in ur wasteland, vorgoning ur poem

When you think about it, it was really only a matter of time before someone made a LOL-cat version of T.S. Eliots The Waste Land.

Og forresten kan man se gutta boyz snakke om Georg Johannesens plass på Vestlandsrevyen inntil imorgen rundt kl 19.

Georg Johannesens plass er* det nye navnet på plassen bak Studentsenteret. Det har vært et opprop.

* Ok - kommer til å bli. Jeg prøver å få en performativ greie på gang.

the daily link

The daily links:

An interesting blog post/essay on photographic reality.

The NY Times, incidentally, has made its archives and all of its current articles available for free now. Which is about time.

Another blogger at the NY Times: Paul Krugman.. Great stuff. This would have gone into the feedreader, if I still had one. But I don't, because my own computer's network card has failed, so I'm using Ragnfrid's mac and can't make myself at home here.

The Norwegian literary fanzine magazine Vinduet recently celebrated its 60^th birthday. In the otherwise good anniversary edition was an article showing photographs of the working desks of Norwegian writers. I didn't really think they were all that interestin but now I see that the Guardian has been doing it a while (or so it seems - the articles aren't dated) and their articles are actually pretty fascinating, so maybe my peripheral eyes are just blinded by the bright lights of the continental, imperial glory of actual European newspapers.

On another happy note, were finally, finally getting an internet connection tomorrow. So no more buying bad expensive coffee to sit in cafes with WLAN access whenever I have to pay a bill. Hopefully, this also means I will be able to find the time to start blogging more regularly again.

DFW & no more paper

David Foster Wallace keeps popping up in blogs and magazines I read these days.

First, there's a new sort-of essay online here. It's the introduction to a volume of American essays he has edited (or as he puts it, Deciderized) for Houghton Mifflin.

He also has a huge essay online over here I should read soon.

So I went looking in the Wikipedia article, and hey, look, there's the title essay to his latest collection of essays. I swear: who even bothers with paper these days?

Og for de norskspråklige: Preben Jordal gir en introduksjon til DFWs essayistikk i siste Vagant. Jordal har også oversatt novellesamlingen Oblivion av ham. Special Bonus: Han klarer å presse inn et stikk til bloggere i artikkelen.

Hardcore galgenhumor hos Mariann i Englegården. Legg merke til hvordan Y-en i Youtube liksom lager et splittet - altså ironisk - utropstegn over punktumene til programlederen i tekstingen.

Oh, and this Crooked Timber essay on the netroots looks interesting, but I don't have time to read it now.

Og forresten så har Audiatur åpnet bokhandelen. Jeg oversatte Audiaturs presentasjonstekst om Øyvind Rimbereid fra svensk. I bunnen av den er det en lenke til dette fine diktet av ham. Jeg er ganske sikker på at det er nytt.