rudi's posterous

Untitled

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:22:00 -0800

But no one likes to see the consequences of abstract philosophy played out in a submerged Nissan, so I'll just offer you some advice. Rageful narcissists are the most violent not when they are insulted or attacked or hated but when they are abandoned to objective reality, the one that doesn't comply with their mirroring demands. Such a person invariably is backed by an enslaved God, which means all things are possible.
If you do manage to leave, don't look back.

via thelastpsychiatrist.com

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The Last Psychiatrist: Another Honor Killing That Isn't About Honor, And Even Less About Nietzsche

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:19:00 -0800

The post-modern twist is that we didn't kill God after all: we enslaved him. Instead of completely abandoning God or taking a leap of faith back to the "mystery" of God; instead of those opposite choices, God has been kept around as a manservant to the Id.

via thelastpsychiatrist.com

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Untitled

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:53:00 -0800

I remember what it’s like to realise you have something, that it genuinely can work, that you’ve found a gap; what it’s like to go beyond knocking ideas round a table to someone begrudgingly agreeing to funding, to the gut-bursting thrill that it’s actually happening. It’s not greed. It’s practical creativity brought on by ubiquitous, connected technology and the decline – for good or no – of the old business world of manufacturing, of discs and old skool mentality. The people we’ve met in Finland are just guys with ideas and they want to make them work. They don’t want “a boss” or “a job”: jobs aren’t safe any more. It’s wanting to be free, to have a future. The Finnish start-up scene is a microcosmic view of the global games trade, of the collapse of triple-A for anything other than the biggest developers and the explosion in mobile, browser and tablet.

via vg247.com

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A favour from Goliath - The Bookish Blog

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:20:00 -0800

arbitrary executable code is arbitrary

via blog.booki.sh

On ebooks and microformats

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Edvard Munch's "The Scream" reinterpreted as espresso macchiato

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:22:52 -0800

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Heavy fog ... someone switched of the nice landscape

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:55:58 -0800

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Untitled

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 03:38:00 -0700

Now reading: "The Drama of the Gifted Child", Alice Miller

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Exactly the same shape, just turned inside-out

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:59:33 -0700

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Getting a bit obsessed with paper folding ...

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:25:57 -0700

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The old couple

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 08:51:51 -0700

They looked quirky and charming, like in a sketch written by Loriot. She: "This place is so nice! And I like this coffee a lot, it's delicious!" He: "It's the same coffee you have every day!" She: "... Has it stopped raining? Yes? Perhaps the sun will come out later, that would be so nice!" He: "No it won't, I checked the weather report."
... at which point I became annoyed with him, for always putting down his partner. He even managed to pay for their coffee in a patronizing way. So sad to waste one's remaining years like this!

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Untitled

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:23:22 -0700

Just realized: Google+ is the new Usenet (the pre-warez one)

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Late-summer fjord sunset

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:45:39 -0700

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Heavy rain over the fjord

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:07:45 -0700

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Oslo, today

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:40:00 -0700

Dear friends,

Last week in the office, in a day of bad weather during a week of bad weather, I heard a thundercrack while on the phone. I remember thinking "this is strange, thunder this short is usually louder because it must be near." In fact, it was some kilometers away, in the town center, where a car bomb wrecked the government quarter.

One of our PhD students was in the library and saw the blast; he phoned us, a bit later, and was so shaken that he spoke a mixture of English and Indonesian. I remember thinking, "please, let it not be a bomb, and if it is, let it not be these fundamentalists because otherwise Muslims the world over will have hell to pay again and they've suffered enough already." We chatted a bit in the office, unaware that the real horror was happening elsewhere, right then.

During the weekend facebook invitations to come into the city center flew around, first telling people to come for a candlelight procession and then, superseding that, to bring roses. I do not know whether there was any official organization going on, but people would have come anyway. There certainly was no crowd control or designated route; people came to the city center and, perhaps, went to the general area of the mayor's building. Everyone had roses.

There must have been a sound system and some preparation, because at one point I heard a trumpet play three or four notes, in the manner of a speaker saying "Test, 1 2 3 ..." into the microphone. The streets were full of people, talking among themselves, looking for friends. The atmosphere was relaxed and quiet, if a little subdued.

Then, within two seconds, everybody was quiet and holding their roses in the air. It was like an inverted cheer, the crowd standing silent, awake and present.

After some minutes, someone spoke on the sound system, saying that due to the number of people, the procession would be cancelled, and asking for understanding.

There was no further speech, and the trumpet player went home without playing the sad song he must have rehearsed. But that did not matter at all -- we were there to pay our respects, not to be entertained or spoken too. After some more minutes, the crowd started moving; I went along, saw some camera teams and about 100,000 people. The crowd was patriotic in a very Norwegian way -- I saw perhaps five flags -- everyone knew what we were here for anyway so there was no need for insecure flag-waving.

As for what's-his-name himself -- he tried to unite the European people behind a common goal, and from what I saw today, he certainly succeeded, albeit in a way that he had not foreseen in the delusional, self-aggrandizing stories he told himself about himself. I wish he could have been there to see it.

A wake or funeral procession is there to help people come to terms with someone's passing, to bring closure and to help living in a changed world. This, today was not a funeral procession for Norway -- it brought closure for me, and I think helped everyone to live in a world that has not changed, where the shared values of people living together endure and are reaffirmed.

And it feels good living in a place where people react in this way.

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