As an example of the former, I choose the fact that it’s no more than perhaps two hundred years since chimneys became common in Norway.
As an example for the latter, I must say that even though I am baffled, at times, at how our forefathers could settle in a climate such as this, I am still grateful they didn’t settle in, say, the territories currently occupied by Bangladesh, a country likely to be flooded with water within the next couple of decades.
Man, we Norwegians really aren’t grateful enough of what we have…
Posts
Congratulations.
Are you proud of beeing born here?
2. October 2007 @ 22:14 ( Permalink )
I guess it’s difficult being proud of being BORN somewhere, that sounds pretty far-fetched. I’d be more interested in hearing if he’s proud of thinking of himself as a Norwegian.
2. October 2007 @ 22:53 ( Permalink )
Not necessarily “proud”, as I didn’t really have anything to do with that, but definitely lucky. However, there might be some pride related to my belonging to a people who have managed to build this kinda (in an utterly, wonderfully mundane way, of course) magnificent society.
Yeah, definitely some pride there.
2. October 2007 @ 23:14 ( Permalink )
Magnificent? Isn’t that laying it on a bit thick?
But yes, mostly, I agree.
2. October 2007 @ 23:53 ( Permalink )
I heard somewhere that you had a better chance of winning the lottery ten times in a row than being born in Norway.
That said, it would still be nice to win the lottery as well
3. October 2007 @ 08:35 ( Permalink )
“Magnificent? Isn’t that laying it on a bit thick?”
Well, yeah, that’s why I tried to modify “magnificent” with that stuff I put in the parantheses.
“That said, it would still be nice to win the lottery as well”
Indeed. Hell, just being born in Norway to begin with would seem to indicate that we’re all lucky bastards, so perhaps we should try start playing Lotto? Although, obviously, in a nation of Gladstone Ganders, our incredible luck would negate each other’s, and we would all become perfectly ordinary, luckwise, thus restoring the laws of chance.
Or something.
3. October 2007 @ 09:33 ( Permalink )
Indeed.
So what you’re saying is, someone from, say, Sudan, coming here, would have virtually zero chance of winning the lottery as his or her luck would be of non-Norwegian proportions.
3. October 2007 @ 14:19 ( Permalink )
But if we went to Sudan and played the lottery there we’d be rich in an instant!
This depends of course on whether or not they even have a lottery - or if you’ll get out with it alive.
3. October 2007 @ 17:57 ( Permalink )
“So what you’re saying is, someone from, say, Sudan, coming here, would have virtually zero chance of winning the lottery as his or her luck would be of non-Norwegian proportions.”
Granted that luck actually exists other than as a way to describe a situation where someone have had the odds on their side, of course.
5. October 2007 @ 08:03 ( Permalink )
“Granted that luck actually exists other than as a way to describe a situation where someone have had the odds on their side, of course.”
Of course it does. What, you think Fortune was just made up by some Roman guy with too much spare time and then av score of really intelligent people bought into his fantasy just like that for a couple of millenia afterwards? ‘Course not. That’d be HIGHLY improbable.
5. October 2007 @ 14:38 ( Permalink )
Perhaps he was just lucky?
6. October 2007 @ 13:56 ( Permalink )
Or maybe everybody else just had a long run of shitty luck?
6. October 2007 @ 15:53 ( Permalink )
You mean like all the other people who invented godesses or luck? Or just the population in general, who from then on had to live with such a concept?
6. October 2007 @ 18:31 ( Permalink )
The latter.
6. October 2007 @ 19:51 ( Permalink )