Images

Rainy Sundays

Its almost a cliché. Its a rainy Sunday afternoon! The good news is that a large second hand bookstore nearby (Röde Orm in Haga) was having a major sale 10 kr per book. Most of the good stuff was gone but I came away with Lars-Ingvar Sörenson licenciate thesis from 1997 entitled Naturrätt, egendomsrätt och praxis (Natural rights, Property rights
and praxis). I am looking forward to reading it.

It begins with a quote from Sitting Bull’s speech 1875 where he speaks about his enemy and says, amongs other things:

They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege. This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. (online version included here)

What can be better on a rainy sunday?
Posted on by mklang

We got W

Its not every day that an alphabet grows. But the Swedish alphabet now has 29 letters! This is because W is now seen as a letter in its own right (as opposed to a strange V). The change has come about in the new Swedish Academy dictionary rumours say that the main reason for this change is the webâ?¦

Otherwise my favourite new word in the dictionary is SnÃ¥lsurfa (miserly surfing) â?? which basically means using someone elseâ??s wifi instead of buying your own.

Posted on by mklang

"We see you" protest today

Sweden has been erratic in moving into the surveillance society. While the bureaucratic tools such as personal identity numbers and identity cards have been used (and abused) for a long time the icon of the surveillance age â?? the camera has not.

This may be due to the Swedish trust in government. State surveillance and control is in place to make society efficient for all therefore it is to be tolerated. Private surveillance is however suspicious â?? or at least it has been.

Legal changes in camera surveillance rules in 1998 began a trend of privatised surveillance which is today causing the massive use of surveillance cameras. Amongst the more unusual uses â?? which are novel in Sweden â?? are camera surveillance of schools and workplaces.

So with the late development of the surveillance state, Swedes are also slowly developing a reaction to it. Today an organisation called Vi Ser Dig (We See You) based at the University of Linköping will stand in a central square in Stockholm take pictures of passers by in an attempt to awaken interest in the almost dead surveillance debate.

Sergels Torg – picture from D. Kolb’s cool site Sprawling Places

So if you are anywhere near Sergels Torg (between 2pm-7pm) â?? bring a camera and become part of the protest.

VISERDIG.SE Uppmanar Allmänheten/Medier/Politiker att Närvara vid Manifestationen den 27/4 kl 14-19 med Syfte att Personifiera �vervakningen!

Posted on by mklang

Election poster

Sweden is moving steadily towards a general election. The Social Democrat Minister of Justice has during this last term been busy diminishing human rights by increasing the rights of the state to eavsdrop. This is a nice spoof poster. The Social Democrats have election posters showing people with the tagline “I build Sweden” The text under the minister is “I bug Sweden”

Posted on by mklang

Chernobyl twenty years later

Its today twenty years since the accident at Chernobyl (Uranium Information Centre briefing paper #22 & IAEA Chernobyl FAQ) an example of how our reliance on technology can go wrong. The accident was brought about by the mixture of over-confidence in technology, fear of criticising the own organisation and the desire to increase production by conducting dangerous of questionable value.

According to the IAEA Chernobyl FAQ the disaster was the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima size bombs but they also add

However, the atomic bomb testing conducted by several countries around the world during the 1960s and 1970s contributed 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material to the environment than Chernobyl.

Comforting news.

Caesium-137 fallout. Source: J.Smith and N.A. Beresford, “Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences” (Praxis, Chichester, 2005) (via wikipedia).

While Chernobyl is the icon of technological disasters it is important not to forget many â??smallerâ?? disasters that have occurred (and will continue to do so). There is a need to be vigilant of technology rather than to believe the infallibility of technical experts. The failure of Chernobyl did not occur because of a lack of experts but rather through the hubris of the experts in place and the lack of infrastructure available for â??lesserâ?? experts (or laymen if there had been any) to point out the dangers of the actions leading up to the steam explosion that destroyed the reactor core (Chernobyl sequence of events).

Since the disaster a 30km zone around the reactor has been evacuated. A side effect of this has been a resurgence of wildlife in the area (BBC story)

In a macabre form of tourism a motorcyclist has travelled within this zone and put a photojournal online this is part of a growing tourism into the dead zone to visit the abandoned towns.

Posted on by mklang

Cherry Orchard

Despite the wonderful day with sunshine and blue sky I have been busy editing (with a bit of new writing). As a reward this evening I am going to see Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard at the Göteborg Stadsteater.

this version has had very good reviews and I am looking forward to it.

About the play: The family return home from Paris to find that their family estate is about to be sold at auction for debt. To all the family it is quite unthinkable that they should lose the wonderful cherry orchard whose white blooms are part of their childhood memories… (synopsis)

Posted on by mklang

Word, limit & date

Thesis update

When the document hit 100 000 the word counter at the bottom of Word just disappeared! Microsoft huh! But 100k that must be cause for a celebration? I will take a walk in the sunshine and return tomorrow – would be a longer break if it wasnt for those damn deadlines.
The good news is that the date is now firmly set. I defend on Friday, 15 September!

Posted on by mklang

So where the bloody hell are you?

In an attempt to grab attention the Australian Tourism has created a typical beautiful tourist add but with a twist. The tagline at the end is â??So where the bloody hell are you?â?? (referring to the tourists I guess!) The original ad can be seen here or here.

The tagline has sparked some debate. In Japan it simply does not work so it was changed to the more polite â??So why donâ??t you come?â?? (The Age). The television ad was banned in the UK for the use of â??bloodyâ??, in Canada for the line â??weâ??ve bought you a beerâ?? (Wikipedia).

The media company (Downwind Media) made a parody of the film which has caused lawyers for Tourism Australia (TA) to threatened legal action over the use of the music used in the parody (the music is similar but tune and tempo are different), TA claim that the offending tune still infringed on their copyright regardless of the musical differences. TA demanded the parody be removed from Downwind Media’s website.

See the spoof on You Tube.

The parody of the tourist advert is a legitimate form of cultural remix. It is particularly relevant since the ad sells Australian cultural icons/stereotypes. Therefore there is a great deal of legitimacy in providing alternative images of that which is sold. As in many cases such as these we can see that the supression has only increased the longevity of the spoof.

The main idea of the spoof is to juxtapose the “traditional” tourist images of tourism & Australia (e.g. outback, hospitality, kangaroos, pubs, watersports, nightlife, aborigines and beaches)

with the more negative images of Australia: violence, racism, drugs, immigration detention centers, dingos, human rights violations.

Posted on by mklang

PhD, competition & publicity

This blog lives a quite, laid back existence. But when I wrote a post asking for help to design the cover of my Phd thesis things exploded (original post here). Since I wanted to spread the information and since I thought it might be a fun idea I asked for the information to be posted on BoingBoing â?? it was posted there. It has also been posted on some of my favourite blogs: Lessig Blog, Karl Jonsson, Det perfekta tomrummet, Foreward & Patrik’s Sprawl.

The effect of this publicity? Take a look at my stats. I dont think that this picture needs any comments!

In addition to this I had no idea that I was going to annoy designers so much by asking what I asked. Take a look at the comments to my post and you will see that the one thing you do not ask a designer for is help. Definitely touched a raw nerve there.

Anyway I have received some contributions already and I will present them all on the 10 May so that they can all be seen and maybe arrange some sort of voting procedure.

Posted on by mklang