I’ve noticed a bit of a ruckus about this new ban on the “stick rocket” kind of fireworks, but I’ve been unable to care much.
I mean, I kinda grew bored with loud bangs and flashy lights when I was 10. Or possibly before.
And also, if I want to hear loud bangs and see flashy lights, [...]
Archive for December, 2007
Fireworks? You mean Embrace’s ‘best of’ album?
Literacy among Norwegians in the 18th century
Today I learned that Norwegian peasants and farmers in the 18th century read a lot more than we have previously thought. The idea of “The Reading Peasant” was long considered to be a National Romantic myth, meant to build up under another myth — that of Norwegians being free, despite being a Danish colony and [...]
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
1968.
168 pages, including an afterword by Jon Bing, translator and professor of information law.
In the not too distant future humans have made Earth almost inhabitable by nuclear war. Colonies have been established on Mars and elsewhere, and most of mankind has moved there. Many still remain, though. Some because they don’t want to go, some [...]
Everyone needs a hobby
“Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul.”
— Tycho,
Penny Arcade.
This does not bode well…
I was in Molde yesterday, to have dinner with a buddy of mine from high school, and somehow at least two thirds of the four hours we spent together were spent talking about World of Warcraft, which said buddy, like so many others, had been pretty much addicted by the last couple of years. Personally, [...]
Curses! Or constructing next term’s schedule
I checked my course registration page at NTNU (ooh!) about an hour ago, and much to my delight I discovered that I’ve been registered for not two but three courses this spring, and that these three combined fill my required term quota of 30 study points.
English Linguistics gives me 7,5 points if I pass it; [...]
I fucking hate the Frankfurt School
“The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. ‘Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,’ the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, ‘and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at [...]
My knowledge of basic household appliances…
… is really sorry.
I already knew this, but I got a reminder today, when I learned from my mother that washing machines (i.e. the kind that do laundry, not the dishes variety) don’t use pre-heated water from the, ehem, water heater, but actually heat cold water from scratch.
New… thingy, let’s call it a “quasi-daily”, or whatever.
For the past two or three years, I’ve been considering to make a thread at one of the forums I hang at, a thread called “What I learned today”. In case some of you think that’s a cool acronym or something, let me assure you it’s not. I’d simply be a thread where people could [...]
Optimism
“All would be well; unthinkable otherwise! Problems ignored were problems defeated! Here was the sensible philosophy; a man would go mad trying to repair each deficiency of the Universe!”
— King Audry of Dahaut,
Jack Vance’s Madouc, page 398.
Midnight Nation
“Feel the misery of the world, David Grey. For one second, I’m going to open your mind to the song of pain, the song I have been forced to hear every day and every night to the last syllable of recorded time.
For just one, fleeting second, David, feel the totality of the suffering and pain [...]
Where you around in Pirate Times?
“Our research shows that pirates flitted about and spoke in a lyrical falsetto voice.”
First brilliant PvP strip in a really long time.
Our hope
“But we will not be around in 500 years to see how our predictions have fared; we can only hope that historians of that future time will be understanding of our inability to guess how things would turn out and why.”
— Laurie Bauer in the conclusion of the discussion of the chances of a [...]
Help! A “challenge”
So. I had an exam in English Language Proficiency just over two weeks ago, where one of the tasks were “language correction: identify, correct and briefly explain the grammar ortography mistakes in the following text”. It was supposed to be 13 mistakes here, but I only found eleven. Can you help me locate the last [...]
Wastin’ money
Be that as it may, seeing as I don’t think I’ll fail any of my exams, I decided to take a quick trip downtown, to visit my favourite purveyors of fine leisure activities.
The first of these was Avalon, also known as Gotham. I was primarily looking for John Scalzi’s Ghost Brigades, but it as turned [...]
I’m concerned for my university
I had my fifth and final exam for the term today, and unfortunately, I thought it was just like the four previous ones.
You see, based on the curriculi and the lectures in the courses I’ve been taking this fall, I’ve been expecting to be satisfied with a straight Cs. Global English had a lot of [...]
w00t!
Finally! Almost two years since I bought and started playing it, and some five or six years since the game’s release, I finally finished Neverwinter Nights!
I was close about half a year ago, too, when I had this rather nice Half-Orc Paladin going for me, but unfortunately, he proved to be no match for the [...]
“Global English” is rubbish
“Given the stress that is laid on spelling by prescriptivists, and the existence of so many dictionaries which provide standard spellings for English words, it is perhaps surprising that there should be any variation in spelling within standard varieties. But there is. Some of this variation is variation between varieties. More often, though, there us [...]
Wee!
I just found out that episode 11 of Heroes’s season 2 wasn’t the only episode to pass me by; I also missed episode 10!
Rip it apart and start again
One of the many reasons to look forward to Ripper.
As for Brian K. Vaughn’s (first, but hopefully not last) run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Season 8″ comics, the best compliment I can give is that I hardly noticed — if indeed I did notice at all, which is doubtful — that this wasn’t written [...]
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