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This site gets a larger than fair share of dissenting comments. I admit I seek them out, on occasion, but were it not for the reliably acid-tongued retorts from dear friends, you'd be wading through inspirational hell, and who wants to read that? Snide repartÈe is infinitely more entertaining than constructive commentary, especially when destructive commentary is called for. This blog — and MemeFirst — came about primarily to replace barroom banter with those friends no longer living within drunk driving distance. One thing we learned, early on, is that all-round general agreement is the enemy of good conversation.
And yet, the uninitiated tend to think these foils represent personal fallings-out; my parents send me worried emails every time Felix and I engage in a snit. It is true that banter is an acquired taste; and it takes a while to learn. The beginning banterer must avoid turning into a cured Leonard Zelig, lest he end up in fisticuffs with psychiatrists over the weather. Some cultures seem predisposed towards banter. It helps, for example, if you are British, or have been in close quarters with them over prolonged periods of time. As for Swedes, on the other hand, getting a mean word out of them requires resorting to the threat of physical violence.
Or so we now know. The Swedish blogosphere used to be a suppportive, back-patting exercise, where you spoke well of a post or not at all. This civil state of affairs was thrown into disarray a month ago when Azzman, at Wookiepunch, started being rude about Swedish bloggers. He called the Swedish blogosphere a bunch of muppets [Swedish]. He thought some bloggers' posts were utter crap. For good measure, he suggested the muppets be put out of their misery and shotThe problem with wookiepunches — and Harrison Ford must know this from the way in which his gun proved useful in a duel with a sword-wielding baddie in Raiders of the Lost Ark — is that they are no match for lightsabers. An armless wookie is a sorry sight indeed. And unable to scratch itself. And probably smells even worse than usual..
The response, at first, was to decry this ghastly glorification of violence. "I've seen too many people die," one blogger replied earnestly. But Azzman would not be deterred, so it was decided to ignore him: "You do not exist. You are an illusion." The problem with that tactic was that Azzman's self-ascribed aim — to become as unpopular as possible — was backfiring gloriously; everybody kept right on reading him for the next much anticipated put-down.
Now a month later, the shock has worn off, Azzman has been incorporated into the mainstream, but, if I may say so, there are fewer "cheese sandwich for lunch" posts in Swedish, wearing bulls' eyes. Snark has arrived in Sweden, and Sweden is a better place for it.
Meanwhile, over in New York, mother Eurotrash is leading her ugly ducklings down ever-longer comment strings packed with snideness and wit. She seems to have blasted her way through the hundred-mark per post, and she coaches her charges well, though with varying degrees of success. Today, for example, between comments #50 and #150, we get Tourette's Symphony in F----Major. Commenting as outsider art. Who'd have thought?
So what is the point of this post? Simply this: In the great Tomatina war that is blogging, nobody should expect to emerge with their pride intact. The sooner everybody realizes this, the better, for humbled bloggers make for better bloggers. Or at least more shameless ones, which is the same thing in my book.
Basically, I have always disdained blog gimmicks like the Friday Five. In Sweden, this meme translates to the Friday Four, because Swedes are Lutherans. Still, I've begun to feel a strange, lemminglike compulsion to participate, so I've devised a way to preserve my hard-won reputation for high irony by making sure everybody knows I am participating just to practice my Swedish. Eller hur?Officiellt hatar jag fredagsfyran, eftersom det ‰r sj‰lvklart en fˆrev‰ndning fˆr att kunna vara exhibitionistisk, p samma s‰tt som hur man spelade "Sanning eller konsekvens" som barn ñ du ‰r "tvungen" att ber‰tta om nÂgot du vanligen ‰r fˆr "blyg" fˆr att prata om, ‰ven om i hemlighet du fantiserar att ditt privatliv ‰r intressant. S barnsligt! Kanske ‰r det ‰ven varfˆr du bloggar ñ du ‰r fl‰rdfull och ynklig.
Officiellt.
Inofficiellt tycker jag mycket om att l‰sa m‰nniskors fredagsfyror. Inofficiellt, fantiserar jag om att delta, eftersom det verkar vara j‰tteroligt att blir lite mer exhibitionistisk, fast om jag deltog, skulle det betyder att jag ‰r fl‰rdfull och ynklig.
Det ‰r naturligvisst sj‰lvklart att jag aldrig ‰r fl‰rdfull och ynklig och exhibitionistisk, s jag har hittat en mycket b‰ttre orsak varfˆr jag ska bli fredagsfyrare. Jag ska gˆra det bara fˆr att ˆva min svenska. Bara d‰rfˆr, fˆrstÂs?
Fˆrst ska jag svÂra den h‰r veckans frÂgor, men sedan kommer jag att fˆreslÂr nÂgra frÂgor fˆr n‰sta vecka; frÂgor som jag vet ni alla vill svÂra.
1. Vilken var den senaste "goda g‰rningen" du utfˆrde?
IgÂr skrev jag en email tillbaka till en Australisk professor i journalistik som hade frÂgat mig hur den svenska pressen hade ber‰ttat om Anna Lindhs mˆrdare, den som sedan inte blev hennes mˆrdare. Jag var inte tvungen att svÂra, men kanske var jag smickrad att hon hade mailat mig, s nu att jag funderar p det ‰r det mindre en god g‰rning ‰n en lyckad exercis i smicker. Egentligen flˆrtade jag liten med henne. ƒr det daligt?
2. Vilken var den senaste, moraliskt sett, tveksamma handlingen du utfˆrde?
N‰r jag var 18 Âr gammal stal jag pengar frÂn kassan d‰r var jag jobbade ñ jag var barman p nÂgon nattklubb i Sydney. Jag hade ˆvertygad mig att det var mina drickspengar, men egentligen var det inte sant. Jag skriver det h‰r bara d‰rfˆr att jag inte t‰nker att min chef mellanstans har l‰rt sig svenska. Det var den sista gÂng jag var omoraliskt. Dessutom, jag ljuger aldrig.
3. Gˆr man "goda" handlingar av godhet eller fˆr att man sj‰lv mÂr bra utav det?
Jag gˆr "goda" handlingar varje gÂng att det ‰r mer effektivt fˆr samhÂllet att jag gˆr dem, ‰ven om det inte ‰r jag som har belˆning. Till exempel, varje gÂng jag betalar moms. Goda handlingar ‰r bara abstrakta sj‰lviska handlingar.
4. Vad gˆr du om du hittar 10 000 i anv‰nda sedlar?
ƒr det en kruggfrÂga? Fˆrst skulle jag sˆka lite mer p omgivning ifall att det finns mer pengar, eftersom 10 000 kr. faktiskt inte ‰r s mycket. Till exempel, det ‰r inte tillr‰ckligt fˆr att kˆpa en ny Apple G5, s kanske skulle jag ist‰llet kˆpa en biljett till NYC fˆr att kˆpa en iPod Mini.
FÂr jag nu fˆresl de h‰r frÂgorna fˆr n‰sta vecka?
1. Vilka bloggare ‰r du mest avundsjuk pÂ?
2. Vilka bloggare sv‰rmar du fˆr?
3. Vilken bloggare skulle du vilja vara?
4. Om vad angick senaste inl‰gg du best‰mde att inte publicera? Var det fˆr personligt eller fˆr daligt skrivit eller ointressant? Eller har du aldrig censurerat din skrift?
Jag k‰nner mig som skolbarn igenÖ
To paraphrase David Denby, David Denby has lost it. The New Yorker's movie critic now notorious for doing really idiotic things and then writing about them in excruciating detail didn't like Lars von Trier's Dogville, calling it, without irony, "avant-gardism for idiots"Slate reviews the reviews of Dogville.. But the movie isn't just bad, according to Denby, it's immoral:
The movie is, of course, an attack on Americaóits innocence, its conformity, its savageryóthough von Trier is interested not in the life of this country (heís never been here) but in the ways he can exploit European disdain for it.The "of course" in the above sentence settles it, then. I was going to argue for raising the bar a bit before calling something an attack on America, maybe even as high as, I don't know, a medium sized office tower and a commuter turboprop, but "of course," all you need these days is a social critique denuded of any possible specificity (just look at the set), minimalist to the point of being illustrated literature, making claims about the nature of free will and moral responsibility that apply universally, including the US. The fact that American society can suffer from innocence, conformity and savagery like the rest of us is clearly an attack on American exceptionalism, unless, "of course," it's David Denby berating Americans for taking their children to see Mel Gibson's savage The Passion of the Christ a few weeks earlier. Because, you see, David Denby is an American, and obviously Lars von Trier is not. Want to see something scary? Take a look at the demographic divergences in IMDB voting patterns for Passion. Check out that under-18 female vote (8.8!), but especially the discrepancy between US and non-US voters (8.0 vs. 6.7) — it must be one of the widest ever. (I certainly didn't find a movie that generated a more disparate reaction.)
Dogville, in the end, is an abstract, aesthetic indictment of old-testament justice, while The Passion gut-wrenchingly preaches the new testament's "turning the other torso." When Denby's done with them, however, it's "attack on America" versus "tacky America," and choosing the lesser of those two evils is child's play. Of course.
The second in an occasional series.
Ten: Predatory seating.Nine: Culinary relativism.
I am a food racist. There, I've said it. I'm not proud about it or anything. It turns out I've been one for years, but I did not know it until my second day in Stockholm, when Elise dragged me to the mall in Kista to kit me out with deep-winter clothes. In September. After a few hours sweating it out in burqaesque parkas, I needed to replenish my salt levels, so Elise proposed sushi.
I love sushi. The only reason we in the west cook our food is because our disgusting medieval ancestors knew that cooking kills the maggots in sty-bound farm animals. I had a rare and precious opportunity to play in sties as a child in the Ardennes, and I can tell you there is nothing in there you'd want to eat raw. Or even medium-rare. Hence my longstanding reverence for the Japanese/Korean tradition of cleanliness that was the necessary prerequisite for the coming about of sushi.
When we arrived at the Kista sushi bar I was floored by something I'd never seen before. Standing behind the bar was a white guy. Actually, he was whiter than that: he was Serb, I think, and huge. I had never seen a white guy make sushi before. I soon wished that were still the case: He would pick lazily at suspiciously pre-filleted strips of fish which he then mashed onto a gob of rice in the palm of a hand the size of Montenegro. The result invariably exploded on the way from my plate to my mouth. The rolls, too, looked and tasted like stuffed hosepipe. As the Serb glared behind her, Elise turned to me and asked, chirpily, "What do you think?" "Mmm, delicious," I gagged.
In the subsequent year and a half, I've seen way too many white people make sushi over here. They, and their customers, all seem to think that it involves splaying bits of dead fish on rice. I don't even know how to begin to disabuse people of that crude notionLuckily, there are a few good sushi places in Stockholm, manned by Japanese and Koreans, and at least one that could hold its own in New York..
This is not tolerance of gastronomic diversity on the part of Swedes, this is an unacceptable level of culinary relativism, and my stomach and I just won't stand for it. Imagine the Japanese opening a curry restaurant; Indians running a tapas bar, with bullfighting on the television; the Spanish making Borscht; Russian babushkas catering Vietnamese food; and the Vietnamese having a big wok of mama's secret ragu sauce simmering on the stove. Unfortunately, in Stockholm, such imagery is not always just in the mind.
It's been a productive weekend, in a behind-the-scenes kind of way. The Sighs server has had a spring cleaning, and now comes with a new index page. Worth a visit. It's turning into a nice little talent show.
The weather turned balmy this week, above freezing even, and so I shed layers and took the iPod to work yesterday, the extra spring in my step brought to you by early Bjˆrk, Danger Mouse and by the disappearance of the ice sheets that until a few days ago extracted regular Bambi impersonations from unwitting pedestrians.
Bjˆrk's happy happy Big Time Sensuality [iTunes] was playing when I got off the subway at Gamla Stan, and then as I passed the turnstyles I got a sudden sense of deja vu. I'd done this before. More specifically, I'd heard this song before as I exited a subway on my way to work, but not here — in New York, Cortlandt Street Station, getting off the N/R line coming down Broadway and about to take my commute through the bowels of the World Trade CenterNot, of course, on my iPod, but on my Rio 600. iPods are strictly a post 9/11 phenomenon — they were introduced in Oct 2001. Since it is hard to imagine life before iPod, I predict we will soon be spotting anachronisms in period films set in pre-9/11 New York, with iPod-toting actors jogging past WTC-intact skylines..
Over the past two and a half years I have often thought back to the human geography of those buildings, especially the mall through which I walked twice a weekday for 4 years until September 10, 2001. I'd always be among the first passengers out the gate, having made sure to board the train at the right spot. Once on the concourse, I'd aim straight for the North Tower on the other end, which meant cutting obliquely across a wash of PATH train commuters brimming up from the depths along steep, wide escalators. They were from New Jersey, I knew, which is why it was tempting to think of them as living on some Dantesque level of hell below, being summoned to work for the day.
Every day, I'd pass the same stores: First, a newstand on the right, source of my weekly Economist, then a J.Crew, where I bought a turtleneck sweater I finally wore out a few weeks back. On the left, Chase Manhattan bank machines, followed by a slew of cosmetics stores. Then, past the PATH, on the right, a GAP, a science gadget store, a souvernir store, and a deli that sold obscenely large Bacci chocolate assortments, no doubt to guidos crawling home to the wife after some infidelity at the office.
I'd then take the revolving doors into the North Tower lobby, and cut across a corner to the footbridge to the World Financial Center, where I worked. Every time I crossed that bridge I marvelled at how tempting a target it could be to terrorists. Blow this up, I would think to myself, and you'd kill scores and block a major New York traffic artery. How spectacularly clueless of me.
Yesterday, as I walked the tunnel that leads from Gamla Stan station to the street, I also walked the old commute in my mind. Bjˆrk's big brash voice led the way in both places. It was good to be there.
So here I go and stick my neck out, wear my heart on my sleeve, write several earnest posts about political matters at great expense to your patience, and now this happens. I sold my political virginity far too cheaply in Sweden.
"Liberal" Folkpartiet has agreed to immigration restrictions on citizens from new EU countries on terms only somewhat less onerous than those proposed by the ruling Social Democrats. The decision wasn't unanimous: Folkpartiet MPs voted 23-17 in favor for this counterproposal. There was quite a debate, apparently. Sounds like a party voting against its conscience.FPs proposal differs from SDs on three points:
1) Immigrants should be able to come to Sweden to look for work for up to three months — SD wants immigrants to find work from their home country before getting a work permit.
2) SD also wants to make sure immigrants have accommodation waiting for them before they get to Sweden — FP thinks that is silly.
3) Finally, FP thinks that the government should not be allowed to prolong these restrictions unilaterally, without parliamentary approval.
At least the FP wants these restrictions to expire sooner, rather than later. But what's so hard about acting on one's principles now? Since when does being in favor of a common labor market no longer mean actually wanting to implement a common labor market — especially if the symbolism invokes two classes of EU citizenship? Does the FP think the Poles don't notice? Is looking good in comparison to Italy now a policy goal?
For an added bonus, watch Labor Minister Hans Karlsson not answering good questions [Real, Swedish] on this topic.
The Swedish government on Friday announced it intends to restrict immigration from the new EU member states for at least two yearsThe proposal [PDF] is outlined in English here. Quotes for this post taken from this article.. It held a press conference, available online, which I watched, and didn't quite follow, but I got the impression reporters' questions were being incredibly softball. Did one guy really ask, "what are you going to do to prevent Eastern European Gypsies from moving here"?
So here is my list of questions I wish somebody had asked at the press conference todayIf somebody did ask them, my apologies.:
ONE: Migration Minister Barbro Holmberg, you say that these immigration restrictions on EU citizens from eastern Europe are temporary, to be lifted in 2 (or 5 or 7) years, in order to make the transition to a common EU labor market more gradual. Can you explain what exactly you expect will change between now and then that will make the challenges you say exist now go away in 2 (or 5 or 7) years? Are you planning on gradually diminishing social security for everyone in the meantime? Are you planning on loosening labor laws in the meantime? Do you need more time to convice the electorate that cheap immigrant labor benefits immigrants as producers and Swedes as consumers? Or are you waiting for Eastern Europe to become rich? Or are you are just postponing politically difficult decisions, even if economically it is clear which is the best policy?
TWO: All other EU countries are intent on applying immigration restrictions on new members. If Sweden were not to do so, it would have the pick of the crop, the best and the brightest, the most motivated and the most mobile of Eastern Europe's talent all to itself. Why are you forgoing this wonderful opportunity for economic growth? Aren't these the kind of immigrants you want? Do you want the economy to stagnate?
THREE: Minister Holmberg, earlier you said,
"We welcome workers from the new member states, but we say that when one comes to Sweden to work it must be real work and for a wage one can live off."Vi v‰lkomnar arbetstagare frÂn de nya medlemsstaterna, men vi s‰ger att n‰r man kommer till Sverige och arbetar s ska det vara till ett riktigt arbete och det ska vara med en lˆn som gÂr att leva pÂ.Has it occurred to the government that if immigrants were able to ask competitive wages, perhaps it wouldn't cost so much to live in Sweden?
FOUR: One effect of your policy would be to protect Swedish jobs vulnerable to cheap immigrant labor, such as those in the construction industry. Given that your restrictions must eventually expire, it is inevitable that immigrants will largely take over these industries the moment they are allowed to compete on price. Are you actively lobbying LO (the umbrella trade union) to spend its considerable resources retraining these at-risk Swedish workers in the meantime, or do you instead expect LO to spend its considerable resources lobbying you to prolong these restrictions for as long as possible?
FIVE: Folkpartiet is expected to come out with a counterproposal soon, and an eventual compromise is not out of the question, DN reports.
"I don't understand how anyone can be against this proposal." Labor Minister Hans Karlsson, when you said,
Jag fˆrstÂr inte hur nÂgon kan vara emot det h‰r fˆrslaget.You were kidding, right?
On Thursday I set out to blog a panel discussion at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs on a topic dear to my heart: "Is integration still possible?". It was sponsored by The Economist, and one of their writers, Joel Budd, was on the panel. The government's representative was Lise Bergh, the number two in charge of "democracy an integration issues" under minister Mona Sahlin. A further two panelists were late replacements: Mahin Alipour, an immigrant from Iran, a left-leaning (even for Sweden) activist for women's rights; and Mauricio Rojas, once a far-left political refugee from Chile in 1973, now a professor in economic history at Lund University and a solidly liberal member of parliament, in league with the FolkPartiet.
What, if anything, new did I take away from the proceedings? By far the strongest impression made on me was by RojasIn researching Rojas I came across this interesting read: A paper by him entitled The Historical Roots of the Swedish Socialist Experiment [PDF]. Definitely worth it if you have a spare 20 minutes — it answers, to a large extent, some questions I posed here.. I had quite simply no idea that there are in fact Swedish politicians who can be strident and articulate and even combative in a debate, and it was an absolute pleasure to watch. It helps that he was stating basic economic truths, some of which I've harped on before: If immigrants in Sweden are not allowed to compete on price, they are not going to find official employment. As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrants is far higher than that for native Swedes, which produces an underclass of immigrants excluded from formal participation in the economy. These immigrants do work, of course, on the black market; but they also become long-term recipients of social allowances, which irritates native Swedes. According to Rojas, we have racism through exclusion, but with this exclusion being a direct result of political choices made by the government.
Joel Budd added, for good measure, that it would be a "foolish source of national pride that everybody who is working legally is making a lot of money." Budd also underlined some other observations made recently in The Economist and elsewhere: In ethnically diverse societies, people stop supporting welfare, because one is less inclined to give neighbors social security if they are from a different backgroundThis is not a reason to stop welfare preÎmptively, of course. That would be committing a naturalistic fallacy. Nor should it be a reason to stop immigration.. And welfare states don't just have a hard time adapting to immigration, they have a hard time adapting to all kinds of social, economic and technological change.
By the time they were done, the question being debated was no longer "Is integration still possible?" but "Is the welfare state still possible?" Is cultural homogeneity a precondition for the welfare state? Will Sweden have to choose between immigration and a generous safety net? Bergh looked somewhat taken aback at the notion there might have to be a choice; she could have answered — or at least, I would have answered — that crucial elements of the welfare state could be salvaged if only Sweden were to make wages more flexible and loosen labor laws. A vibrant job-creating economy would depend less on welfare to help citizens and recent immigrants get by; welfare would become just a means to a more useful placement in the job market, and hence would take up fewer resources.
But she didn't say this. If I heard her correctly, she actually said that wage flexibility was not necessary, and that other resources (which ones?) would be put to work to prevent this choice — immigration or welfare — from becoming pressing. She could also have told Rojas that Sweden's liberals were looking a bit too gleeful at the prospect of this choice, given their objective to dismantle welfareAren't there better reasons to dismantle the welfare state?; could Sweden not perhaps buck the trend where immigration leads to less social solidarity, and hence a diminishing of support for welfare? The country is among the most welcoming of any immigrant nation, together with the US and UK, and especially when compared with Denmark, the Netherlands and France. Tension surrounding immigrants in Belgium stems from prejudices that were in place in the native population from the very first day that gastarbeiders arrived in the 60s. This does not strike me as having been the case in Sweden; Sweden began its immigrant experience with a positive attitude, and as a result many have thrived, integrated, and given back to the community that took them in — look at Rojas. Also to Sweden's credit, there is no anti-immigrant Vlaams Blok here — there simply is no popular support for it.
One question which did not come up in the discussion was restrictions to access to welfare for immigrants from the new EU countries. I asked Rojas about it after the debate, and his answer was a little curious: He thought that while of course it was an important political matter, in the long run the issue was not so important, and in any case, on Friday the government would submit its proposal for dealing with this so we should wait and see. It sounded a little like there was some kind of compromise in the air.
One six month subscription to the gym at Eriksdalsbadet: 2300 kr.
One "Free Brunei" T-shirt, just arrived: $20.99
My Blogger "hoodie", just arrived: Free
The looks I got from the good burghers of Stockholm tonight: Priceless
And as I'm on a roll plagiarizing other people's creative geniusParodying MasterCard ads:
Possibly expensive...
The Swedish word for the day is Nordostersjˆkustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranl‰ggningsmaterielunderhÂllsuppfˆljningssystemdiskussionsinl‰ggsfˆrberedelsearbeten
Update 10/3/2004: Now minus hyphens to please the pedants among you.
Update II, 10/3/2004: I spelled the word wrong. Correct spelling in comments.It means preparatory work on the contribution to the discussion of the maintenance support system for the installation equipment of the northeast coast's air surveillance simulator.
Not only is this the longest Swedish word, it is also, apparently, the longest word of any language. Something for Swedes to be proud of, I should think.
Felix Salmon has a post up lamenting the fact that of those websites which do provide RSS content syndication, only a few provide the entire post's contents; most provide just the headline and a short summary.
As usual, it is a pleasure to point out why Felix is wrong when he carps about matters technological. Today, he is wrong on two counts:
1. As an alternative to the "traditional" method of scanning news and blogs — manually visiting every site on your bookmarks list to see if anything's been updated — an RSS newsfeed reader offers a double advantage: It can alert you to updated content by regularly downloading feeds and checking them for new material, and it can do so using little bandwidth, since RSS feeds are short and sweet — at least until Felix has his way with the poor things. Turn your RSS feed into a full-content behemoth and you lose one of the two reasons for using it, because a feed with 15 supersized items surely outweighs a typical 10-post blog index pageThe only reason MemeFirst has the full content of posts in its RSS feed is because of Felix's badgering.. NetNewsWire for the Mac checks every feed every half-hour by default; If these are of the obese variety, you might as well be downloading the index page of every website in your shortcut list instead.
But Felix has an all-you-can-eat broadband account, so why not give him the option, like 456 Berea Street does, to pile up plate after plate if he's already paid for it? For popular websites, the answer is simple: It would cost too much to have hundreds of thousands of newsfeed readers demanding the entire recent contents of the site every half hour. But there is an additional reason...
2. Why try to read a newsfeed item inside a newsreader at all, where you cannot reference the cascading style sheet that goes with it? Unless the content is limited to pure text, it will always look worse, possibly even unintelligibleTake, for example, the marginalia on my blog. It is text inside <span> tags within the body of a regular post, and it is shifted left using CSS style attributes. Lose the instructions implicit in the style sheet, and this text is just squashed in between what I write here to the right.. The one compelling reason is that it saves bandwidth. But we've already shown Felix to be a gleeful guzzler of that commodity. It's as if he wants to downgrade his blogreading experience.
Actually, my suspicion is that Felix is just annoyed at having to go through the extra step of clicking on a permalink and switching to a browser whenever the summary proves intriguing or just plain mystifying. The solution to this problem is not to demand full-content RSS feeds, but to switch to a newsreader that automatically fetches and renders inline the permalinked post, HTML/CSS and all, with comments, and on demand. In the case of OS X, that's easy — you just appropriate the Safari engine, and this is exactly what Shrook has done. The current version, 1.33, does it very nicely, but the preview for 2.0 (which expires March 9) takes newsreading to a whole new level.
For me, Shrook 2 will finally wean me off hunting and pecking through my bookmarks for new content. And it will free Felix from the Sisyphean task of getting people to change their RSS feeds to please his quirky palate; instead, he will now be able to focus on the far more noble cause of getting people to provide RSS feeds in the first place — preferably dainty ones.
It's a post about Firefox, that great new extensible browser, and how one extension lets you do one-click (sort of) instant translations of words and phrases. It's an indispensible tool if you regularly read websites in a language you suck in. In my case, that'll be Swedish.Uppdaterad 21 mars: Texten ‰r korrigerad (igen) (tack Christine!). OcksÂ, en ny version av den "extension" kom ut nÂgra timmar efter min post s jag har ‰ndrat instruktionerna.
Allt fˆr ofta, n‰r jag l‰ser svenska bˆcker, slÂr jag inte upp de ord som jag inte kan i lexikon. Det tar fˆr lÂng tid, Âtminstone 20 sekunder fˆr varje ord, och d‰rfˆr fˆrsˆker jag hellre gissa betydelsen frÂn kontexten, utan att veta om jag har r‰tt. P s s‰tt l‰r jag mig egentligen inte s mycket.
P webben gÂr det snabbare, eftersom jag kan surfa till ett lexikon och f en ˆvers‰ttning. Men det drˆjer ‰nd 10 sekunder. Fˆrst mÂste jag kopiera ordet, sedan hitta lexikon bland genv‰gar, sedan klistra in ordet p r‰tt fˆnster och v‰lja i vilket sprÂk jag vill ha ˆvers‰ttningen.
Varfˆr kan jag inte klicka p ordet i webbl‰saren och omedelbart f en ˆvers‰ttning? Jag hade t‰nkt kanske programmera nÂgot fˆr min favoritwebbl‰sare, Safari, men jag ‰r faktiskt lat och jag trodde att nÂgon annan eventuellt skulle gˆra arbetet.
Slutligen har det skett. Med Firefox, en ny webbl‰sare fˆr PC, Mac och Linux, kan man l‰gga till "extensions", och en av dem ‰r n‰stan precis vad jag har letat efter. Titta:
Man kan sj‰lv programmera en webbdatabasfˆrfrÂgan, s jag har valt att ˆvers‰tta frÂn svenska, men fˆr dem som vill ˆvers‰tta frÂn engelska eller ett annat sprÂk till svenska ‰r det lika l‰tt.
Hur gÂr det till? Fˆrst, ladda ner och installera l‰saren. Sedan, medan du anv‰nder Firefox, hitta extension "Dictionary Search" h‰r. St‰ng webbl‰saren och starta igen.
Nu, p Preferences, klicka p Extensions, v‰lj "Dictionary Search", och klicka p "Options":
Om du vill ˆvers‰tta frÂn svenska till engelska, skriv "http://lexikon.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/swe-eng?$" som URL. Fˆr att ˆvers‰tta frÂn engelska till svenska, skriv "http://lexikon.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/swe-eng?:$". Du kan ha upp till fyra olika ˆvers‰ttningar. Hur enkelt som helst.
Firefox ‰r mycket b‰ttre ‰n Microsoft Explorer. Du har ingen orsak att forts‰tta anv‰nda Explorer som webbl‰sare: Inga "popups", och "tabbed browsing" ‰r de tv stˆrsta fˆrdelarna. Jag kan inte ‰nnu importera mina favoriter frÂn Safari till Firefox, och Firefox ‰r fortfarande Beta, s jag v‰ntar lite innan jag byter webbl‰sare. Men begreppet "extensions" ‰r en av dem mest sp‰nnande innovationerna jag har sett p webben.
On Monday I attended a "debate" in the press room of the foreign ministry, topic Hur ser dom p Sverige? — How do they (foreigners) see Sweden? "Debate" is in scare quotes precisely because there was nothing scary to it. Everybody on the panel was ¸ber-polite to one another, agreed with everything, thought it worth adding a point perhaps or underscoring a particular sentiment while the audience snarfed down some rather fine wine during working hours. This audience consisted primarily of aging foreign correspondents, who during question time proceeded to ask questions that were really answers, to which the very polite panel listened intently.
The stunning conclusion: The image Sweden has abroad does not correspond exactly to reality. As to why this might be the case, the consensus was that there had been a miscommunication somewhere, a failure shared by both Swedes and foreign correspondents to be as accurate as they could be.
While various anecdotes to this effect were recounted over the course of an hour and a half, I devised an alternative theory, which I'll run by you now. Could it be, possibly, that Sweden fulfills an indispensable role in national political debates everywhere as an ideal — a shorthand for an kind of polity against which to compare the local failures or successes? Perhaps American Republicans require Sweden to be a socialist suicide central. Perhaps Eastern Europeans demand that Sweden be a capitalist success. Maybe Southern Europe wants Sweden to be efficient. I can go on, put you get my point.
Against such a deluge of idealizing for local consumption, there is not much that Sweden can do, besides perhaps trying to ride on the coattails of a net positive fallout. What's so bad about being a land of blonde athletic reserved singing nudists? It beats being a land of beery pedophiles, right?
If my theory is right, then a far more interesting (and difficult) question to answer is, Why Sweden? Why has Sweden, and not Finland or Canada or Australia, become a global yardstick for measuring progress, especially if, arguably, Sweden itself does not measure up to the myth? I don't know the answer, but I think, in part, it has to do with historical accident; and once Sweden was typecast as the Jean-Luc Picard of nations, boldly going, it was a role so compelling that subsequent career turns just haven't registered. There needs to be a Sweden on the world stage; if it didn't exist, they'd have to invent one.
If Sweden ever wants to opt out of this role, it will not suffice to write more letters to the editors. Drastic measures will be needed. Drastic measures like... "When Good Swedes Go Bad!" the TV show, from the people that brought you "When Good Pets Go Bad!" and "When Chefs Attack!" I envisage the pitch would go something like this:
A fascinating, frightening program that shows what can happen when sweet, doting, responsible Swedes revert to their natural behaviour. Amazing, never-before seen footage of shocking real-life incidents will show ordinary members of Swedish society letting their true instincts take over:That should do it.
ï A CEO savagely guts his company for personal gain
ï An unemployed loser turns on his foreign minister
ï A tame village pastor murders his wife once too often!
ï An alcoholic shoots the prime minister in the back
These are just a few of the horrifying events that are caught on camera and give us all a lesson in what can happen when government fails to act responsibly and treat its citizens humanely. Earth's best friend? You will never look at Swedes in the same way again after you see what happens ëWhen Good Swedes Go Badí.
Anonymous blogs are undeniably the blondes of the blogosphere: They have more fun. Look at TMFTML, Eurotrash, Belle de Jour, d-nasty, Old Hag and early Salam Pax, just for starters. They are funnier, meaner, not to be relied upon, and just more shameless in their obsessions, and we who have inadvertently accrued blogs upon which our reputations rest fantasize wildly about the posts we could write if only we had that fling with anonymity.
What blonde blogs lack in credibility, they make up for in entertainment. And because they're anonymous, they're also more frank, with far more shortcomings flaunted than in "reputable" blogs. They're seductive like nothing else, though you know they may well be leading you on.
For those who take their taxonomy seriously, let's be clear: this class of blogs comprises those where the author's real name is difficult to find for the general reader or an intended target (family, boss, friend or genocidal despot). All the authors in this class claim to be writing as themselves, but a subclass is in fact lying to us.
It is in this subclass that we find room for a refreshing kind of fiction. Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl, is likely the first break-out success of this genreAn earlier blog, The Disappearance of Isabella V, was too badly researched to be credible.. Even if BdJ turns out to have been written by an actual prostitute instead of by you or me, the blogosphere is ripe for this experiment, where reading means having to divine whether writing is fictional or documentary. It inoculates the reader with a healthy skepticism towards knowledge claims of all kinds, and this is always a Good Thing.
So this class of blogs is innovative, but not without historical precedent. In Stranger Shores, J.M. Coetzee writes an essay about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, from which it is worth quoting at length:
Properly speaking, Defoe is a realist only in that he is an empiricist, and empiricism is one of the tenets of the realist novel. Defoe is in fact something simpler: an impersonator, a ventriloquist, even a forger (his Journal of the Plague Year is as close to a forgery of an historical document as one can get without beginning to play with ink and old paper). The kind of 'novel' he is writing (he did not, of course, use the term) is a more or less literal imitation of the kind of recital his hero or heroine would have given had he or she really existed. It is fake autobiography heavily influenced by the genres of the deathbed confession and the spiritual autobiography.
I don't know if many who read Robinson Crusoe in 1719 fell for this literary ruse, but I suspect many did notThe writings of Defoe and the author of BdJ (if she's not real) are not to be confused with the roman ‡ clef or anonymously authored fiction clearly marked as such, like Primary Colors.. By appropriating the newly minted conventions of the blog, the Defoean narrative is finally empowered with the ability to credibly sustain fiction as fact over a prolonged period of time despite the close scrutiny of readers. In theory we may never know who writes an anonymous blog, and the illusion, if that is what it is, can be tweaked for maximum effect in response to feedbackDefoe, too, played this game, though within the confines of the technology of the day. According to Coetzee,
"In his Serious Reflections, the author of the earlier volumes finds it necessary to defend himself against charges that his life-story is made up, that it is simply a romance, that he is not even a real person. 'I Robinson Crusoe', he writes in his preface, 'do affirm that the story, though allegorical, is also historical...'".
All this sounds like tremendous amounts of fun; it sounds like a different kind of fun than can be had with a group blog or a blog like this one. Perhaps, to experience blogging in all its guises, the well-rounded blogger will soon want to dabble in all three forms. I can think of at least one more genre innovation, however: The anonymous group blog — which should be wonderful for those with multiple personality disorder(s).