Category: Items that do not fit in other categories

Ok, I admit it, this one is _old_… but hose of you who haven’t listened to it yet, you really should. The Telecrapper 2000 is an invention which will let a computer answer calls from telemarketers – by playing a loop of little sound bites of speech and listening for breaks in the telemarketers efforts where these might be applicable.
Now the cool thing is that they actually put out real sample recordings of the machine speaking to real telemarketers! You really need to listen to examples 5, 12a1 and 12a2…

It really shows what telemarketing does to you – probably one of the activities that comes closest to prostitution in our capitalist society…

Which brings me to the follwoign “funny item”: I noticed today that someone from the Marishi University of Management has been visiting my site recently. Never heard about them? On their site they describe they describe themselves:

All students and faculty practice a simple, natural procedure — the Transcendental Meditation® technique. Extensive published research has found that this technique optimizes brain functioning, dissolves stress, and improves learning ability. The daily experience of transcendental consciousness strengthens the brain circuits that integrate expanded awareness with the ability to focus sharply. This is called total brain functioning.

So now you might be thinking that this can’t possibly be a respected university, but think again:

The University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

And not enough about that:

95% of the University’s students receive Federal, State of Iowa, and/or other forms of financial aid. The typical award for U.S. students covers 80–90% of the tuition and fees.

tsss, tsss. What a Halloween!

It took quite a while, and it used up quite a bit of my summer this year. But now it is out: The Norwegian Social Anthropological Yearbook 2005!

Besides trying to teach poetry analysis and US history to a 12th grade, trying to finish my master thesis before November 15th, producing a bunch of mid-term papers, engaging in minor political struggles on institute and university level as well as planning for those on an even higher level, helping to get the distribution of this book going has been my main occupation lately. I personally have contributed with a few months of setting plus one article which tries to compare Douglas and Flensburg in a Marxist analysis, and then there are twenty other articles from all over the country (and yes, they’re all a lot better than mine, but nobody dares say anything cause they’re afraid to loose their setter for next year’s edition)! So please, go on and buy it (click on it)! It’s only 100 NOK for those of you who are are in Oslo (you can get it at the institute office), but we’ll send it anywhere if only you pay the postage. We have already received orders the anthropological institutes from the universities of Bergen, Oslo and Copenhagen, so hey, we’re important. 😛

Of course, blogging has been there for quite a hile amongst average urban internet users. However, in connection with the Norwegain elections, it really has become an instrument amongst the Norwegian left. The first thing was Kristin Halvorsen’s blog, (leader of Socialist Left Party SV) but she never had time to write in it so it was taken off air – and has since been replaced by a blog at the worst yellow press newspapers “VG”. Then we got the blog from Liv Gulbransen and Erling Folkvord (1st and 2nd candidate for Oslo Red Voting Alliance RV). After the elections, which put SV in the government although they went down from 12.5% to 8.8% and RV outside the parliament, focus has been mounting on the Magnus Marsdal hate blog (leader of ATTAC Norway and co-author of 2 books, not very popular amongst one section of the left mainly due to his high self-esteem and very popular with the rest). During the election campagin, he and his friends had been given the opportunity to keep a blog at one of the major Oslo focused classic conservative newspapers as they were labeling themselfs as a “think tank”. And then there are all those blogs with less direct focus on them – but that are still read a lot.

The last thing I talked about as the night before election day, when I chose to go home instead of sleeping outside the parliament. When I wrote those lines, I had just left the camp and was planning to spend the night before the election at home. When I left them, they had my tent, three banners a tabek with five big chairs around it and I thought that the camel woman, the Danish doctor and one grown up Oslo activst would be able to handle it all.
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The last two days have been equally exciting, although less contrastive. The camp still stands, and we were filmed by Danish TV2, Swedish SVTV1, Finish MTV3 and Helsingin Sanomat as well as Norwegian Dagbladet. The plan is now to stay for election night…

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The mobilization for September 3rd (Oslo, but Trondheim’s site is better) is about to come to an end. That is pretty much the end of the election campaign for me for this time. With the peace group we had one last stunt yesterday, which was sort of co-ordinated with activists in Germany and Copenhagen, but we still haven’t seen any pictures of their actions.

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Ok, so we had one last day of sumemr today, so I used the chance to consume the last soft ice this summer. But now we’re going for the cold and dark time of the year… and Douglas is calling.
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Ok, so now at semester start there is this student parlament thing comming up. First thing is a stay at a hotel to decide upon a paper that, quite frankly, does not really have all that much contents, and more importantly, really won’t have much of any effect. Now for that, they’re planning on spending the weekend at a hotel with whirl and swimming pool outside of town – listening to speeches of themselves and various other people that are important enough to wear ties. And they’re all really concerned about it all working out well, and everybody being friend across political fractions etc.; it’s ridiculous.
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oh well, so I am back once more, and the internet still is there. Actually I have been for a couple fo days, but I hadn’t really managed to settle in, and I was waiting for an article in the German Die Zeit on the Solid camp as the reporter spend a considerable amount of time trying to get into the details of my background. Now I wanted to link to it as Die Zeit comes out every Thursday. Well I haven’t found it yet online, and I don’t think the paper issue has arrived in Oslo yet, so I really don’t know how it went. It’s one of the first times that Solid has made it into Federal West German news, so I sure hope we’re doing good. The Norwegian Dagbladet also had a small interview with a couple of us on doing extra-curricular activities in an extra section on education, and that went ok. But then again, the Norwegian press tends to be quite a bit better than the Central European press.
Now summer is definetely over, and the Solid camp once again proved to be quite an experience.
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…as we know it. well, that my big hope for right now. Now of course I don’t even have a job, nor a real position or anything, but work piles up nevertheless in some way or another. Now it’s only about 24h until I leave Oslo again. One rather short Norwegian week is about to end, and… oh yeah, I got a new design on this page. It’s not that beautiful and I have a lot of complaints myself, but it’s gonna have to stay that way until I return to my online access. I hope I get enough energy to actually write sensible stuff. I think I should write something about Copenhagen….
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