When it Hits.
Posted 21:47 CET Friday January 15th, 2010 (55 days ago). 157 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Politics.
Yeah, you probably heard what went down in Haiti. If you haven’t, here’s a quick summary: On Tuesday, a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and a country that was in rather miserable shape already is now on its merry way to hit rock bottom. The estimates of number of casualties are rather hazy as of now, I’ve seen numbers ranging from 30,000 to 500,000 – and that’s just form the earthquake itself. If you want to know more, Wikipedia has a detailed article about the 2010 Haiti earthquake you can read.
According to the same source, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas by most economic measures. It had a nominal GDP of 7.018 billion USD in 2009 with a GDP per capita of 790 USD, about $2 per person per day. Needless to say, the country’s infrastructure was in no way capable of handling a natural disaster like the one we’re seeing now even before the earthquake hit, and most of us can only imagine what it’s like now. So, please, if you can spare a few dollars – or whatever currency you might use – donate to your favorite humanitarian organization.
That concludes today’s morale encouragement. Now let’s put everything into perspective. Continue reading "When it Hits." →
Get Rid of Free Newspapers!
Posted 19:58 CET Thursday October 15th, 2009 (147 days ago). 154 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Politics.
I should probably have written this entry in Norwegian because it’s only relevant for people living in Norway, but there are quite a lot of people who live in Norway who don’t speak a single word Norwegian – I know a few – and it’s very relevant for them.
Anyway.
I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in Norway it’s possible to avoid getting your mailbox stuffed with advertising, leaflets and whatnot simply by attaching a sticker to your mailbox or front door saying that you don’t want it. The sticker doesn’t even have to be a pre-made one, you can just create your own. And from the 1st of June this year, it was possible do the same to avoid getting free newspapers as well. When I came home from work today, I’d received one district newspaper, one city newspaper and one that was strictly not a newspaper, but an advertisement newspaper from a real estate broker.
I don’t read any of them. If I’m interested in district or city news, there are great sites on the internet that give me just that and when I eventually decide that I need a bigger apartment, I can collect information I need to achieve on the fantastic interweb, too. So today I’m taking action, I’m attaching a sticker to both my mailbox and front door.
If you don’t read any of the free newspapers you get in your mail either, you should do the same. Below are two versions of such a sticker, one that I grabbed from the site Grønn Hverdag and a version I made without the Grønn Hverdag URL in case you for some reason don’t want to advertise for the site. For kicks, I’ve also included the same two versions of a sticker that should stop the flow of advertising you really don’t need if you haven’t done that already. Right click the images you want to save and select “Save image…” or whatever your favorite browser might call saving an image to your computer. Then print, attach with scotch tape and live happily ever after.
Election 2009.
Posted 11:46 CET Tuesday September 1st, 2009 (191 days ago). 105 views. No comments. Tagged with Personal, Politics.
No surprises here. If you’re not sure what party to vote for in the upcoming elections, or if you just want to confirm that you’re still not trapped in the Frp mindset, try the Valgomat from NRK,
(click to enlarge)
Enjoy it While You Can.
Posted 19:36 CET Monday June 15th, 2009 (269 days ago). 105 views. No comments. Tagged with Politics, Ramblings.
Ladies and gentlemen, our future looks grim. Just take a quick glance at the current events around the globe: North Korea has declared that they will weaponise their plutonium. In Iran, people are going nuts because of the election results. In Pakistan, a bombing of Peshawar Pearl Continental Hotel in Pakistan kills 18. In Venezuela they ban Coke Zero over unspecified health problems (I kid you not). And in the rest of the world, we’ll all die from the swine flu.
North Korea is in a unusually bad mood because of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1874. The resolution imposes further economic and commercial sanctions on the country. As if we didn’t give them a hard enough time already, eh? I’ve never read through a UN resolution before, and didn’t do it this time either, but I did read through the Wikipedia article about the resolution and came across something I found extremely interesting (given that what is written on Wikipedia is actually correct):
Extending the arms embargo on North Korea by banning all weapons exports from the country and most imports, with an exception to small arms, light weapons and related material – though member states must notify the Security Council five days prior to selling the weapons.
Continue reading "Enjoy it While You Can." →
01 Delta 31.
Posted 21:21 CET Sunday October 19th, 2008 (1 year, 143 days ago). 174 views. 3 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Politics, Ramblings.
Every year, one of the larger Norwegian TV stations rallies the masses to give money to a good cause. Many people volunteer to knock on people’s doors and collect money in small, sealed buckets. I’m not sure what they are called in English, but if you’ve ever seen one, you know what I’m talking about.
Today was that day of the year, but it turned out to be a really shitty day for one of the volunteers, a woman in her forties, when she was mugged by two masked men who threatened her with a knife and ran off with her bucket. The police was quickly notified about this and started sent units to the closest subway stations to look for people matching the very vague description the woman gave, a K9 unit was called in to track down the two men down from the scene of the crime.
When the woman decided to change the description of the weapons used during the robbery to a gun and a saber, two units from the armed task force were called in to assist the unarmed units. After about an hour of dicking around, the police, surprisingly enough, were able to catch the two guys. How do I know all this? I’ve once again found a site that streams police scanners live on the interweb. And there’s a lot of surprising and interesting things to hear. Continue reading "01 Delta 31." →
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