Noen har definitivt for mye fritid. Her har vi en grei gjennomgang av Darth Vader og imperiets største militære fiasko, nemlig slaget om Hoth i The Empire Strikes Back.

From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance, they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos. Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet.

Okay, jeg skal ikke utelukke at det er noe å lære her. Allikevel. Å organisere familen som en arbeidsplass, med delmål, ukentlige “personalmøter” og gud vet hva…det høres ut som et mareritt spør du meg.

The past few years have seen a rapid erosion of the wall that once divided work and family. New technologies allow busy employees to check in with one another during “family time” and allow busy parents to interact with their kids during “work time.” But as close as the two worlds have grown, they’ve rarely exchanged ideas. Parents hoping to improve their families have been stuck with stale techniques from shrinks, self-help gurus and other “family experts.” Meanwhile, in workplaces across America, breakthrough ideas have emerged to make teams run more smoothly.

A new generation of parents is now taking solutions from the workplace and transferring them home. From accountability checklists to family branding sessions, from time-shifting meals to more efficient conflict resolution, families are finally reaping the benefits of decades of groundbreaking research into group dynamics. The result is a bold new blueprint for happy families.

Dette er langt, men veldig bra om mannen som skjøt Bin Laden

But the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation:

Nothing. No pension, no healthcare for his wife and kids, no protection for himself or his family.

Since Abbottabad, he has trained his children to hide in their bathtub at the first sign of a problem as the safest, most fortified place in their house. His wife is familiar enough with the shotgun on their armoire to use it. She knows to sit on the bed, the weapon’s butt braced against the wall, and precisely what angle to shoot out through the bedroom door, if necessary. A knife is also on the dresser should she need a backup.

Then there is the “bolt” bag of clothes, food, and other provisions for the family meant to last them two weeks in hiding.

Et lite tilbakeblikk på Duck Tales, som jo faktisk var ganske så bra tegnefilm på TV

But what’s most impressive about DuckTales is just how adventurous the storytelling is. The genre switches from episode to episode. The plots are often complex and multi-layered, and the show will take a good five minutes to set up all the backstory at the top of an episode, before letting the action sequences rip. In certain episodes, there’s a deeper exploration of the characters’ motivations and morality than might be expected on a series aimed at kids. The series also has a surprisingly sophisticated sense of cultural references, dipping into various cultural wells from time to time, most notably in an episode that strands Scrooge and the other characters on an island straight out of The Tempest and populated with various Shakespearean types. This isn’t an educational show, by any means, but there’s so much imagination in it that it’s not hard to imagine kids who watched it having their minds expanded anyway.

Laurie Penny er i grunnen den eneste grunnen til at jeg av og til slenger innom New Statesman. Her skriver hun om seksualiseringen av samfunnet, og har flere gode poenger.

According to the ‘sexualisation’ logic, a young girl merely has to leaf through a contraband copy of Cosmopolitan or stumble on a Rhianna video on Youtube and wham, that’s it, sexualised. Ruined forever. Nothing to be done, and abuse and wanton, abject harlotry will surely follow.

“The honest facts of female sexual development in adolescence- especially the facts of girls’ desire – have sustained a long history of active censorship,” wrote Woolf in 1997. A decade-and-a-half later, it is still modish for politicians and public health officials to behave as if women and girls had no sexual agency whatsoever, and must instead be protected from the terrible disease of “sexualisation”, which young girls are assumed to catch like the common cold.

Cuba-krisen serru. Der så det stygt  ut en stund. The Atlantic har en fin gjennomgang av hva som egentlig var saken. At krisen for en stor del ble fremprovosert av USA, at atomvåpen på Cuba egentlig hadde minimal strategisk betydning, og at Kennedy var sprøyte gal som satte verden på kanten av stupet over dem. Men PR-messig kom han jo genialt godt ut av det da. Dette er forøvrig kjent stoff det meste av det, var innom det på årsstudiet i Historie, men i allmenheten er det kanskje fortsatt den gamle versjonen med Kennedy som den store helten som lever videre?

Kennedy and his civilian advisers understood that the missiles in Cuba did not alter the strategic nuclear balance. Although Kennedy asserted in his October 22 televised address that the missiles were “an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas,” he in fact appreciated, as he told the ExComm on the first day of the crisis, that “it doesn’t make any difference if you get blown up by an ICBM flying from the Soviet Union or one that was 90 miles away. Geography doesn’t mean that much.” America’s European allies, Kennedy continued, “will argue that taken at its worst the presence of these missiles really doesn’t change” the nuclear balance.

Dette er så bra skrevet at jeg før eller siden er nødt til å fornorske det og stjele det:

Overall, the nature of the problem seems to be that our representative democratic institutions have been captured by meta-institutions that implement the iron law of oligarchy by systematically reducing the risk of change. They have done so by converging on a common set of policies that do not serve the public interest, but minimize the risk of the parties losing the corporate funding they require in order to achieve re-election. And in so doing, they have broken the “peaceful succession when enough people get pissed off” mechanism that prevents revolutions. (…)

So the future isn’t a boot stamping on a human face, forever. It’s a person in a beige business outfit advocating beige policies that nobody wants (but nobody can quite articulate a coherent alternative to) with a false mandate obtained by performing rituals of representative democracy that offer as much actual choice as a Stalinist one-party state. And resistance is futile, because if you succeed in overthrowing the beige dictatorship, you will become that which you opposed.

Dette er vel egentlig en slags utfordring til bloggens ene dedikerte leser. En liste over de 10 merkeligste science fiction-bøkene du ikke har lest. Og ganske riktig, jeg har jo ikke lest noen av dem, men kanskje jeg skal?

Science fiction is great when it’s weird. Really bizarre science fiction takes you on a wild ride, blowing past genre conventions and depositing you someplace miles from where you started. But where can you find the truly odd stuff? Like hallucinogenic spores in a subterranean cavern, the most mind-bending science fiction books can take some digging. We asked around, and here’s what we came up with: the 10 weirdest science fiction (and fantasy) books that you’ve probably never read.

Fascinerende sak den der med han Christopher Jordan Dorner som er på hevntokt mot LAPD. Denne saken går jo alt for langt i å unnskylde ham, men den er ganske interessant allikevel. 

“I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered and libeled me,” Dorner writes, who identifies throughout his manifesto as a patriot whose core beliefs have been shattered. He realizes that he has, as we might say, ‘lost the plot’. He’s happy to tell you why that is, and why he believes he has to divert his killing skills away from the people they were intended for, and against those who trained him. His manifesto or letter, titled simply, ‘Last Resort’. is addressed to America, in a final plea, perhaps, that they address the heart of darkness that lies at its core. The heart of darkness which turned Christopher Dorner from a man who believed that he could best serve his country by working as a navy reservist and LAPD officer, to a man who believed he could best serve his country by destroying the LAPD entirely using the skills he learned in the navy.

I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I’m banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I’m shredding “Reign In Blood” on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I’m racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who’ll kill me if I don’t cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you

Så er det vel bare å vente på at Ender’s Game skal komme på kino da. Har vi trua? Vi gleder oss i hvert fall litt.

The film version of “Ender’s Game” is set for release on Nov. 1 by Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment unit. A tale of violent interplanetary warfare, it is intended to extend the young adult line of those recently merged studios, whose blockbusters, “The Hunger Games” and the “Twilight” films, have had about $4 billion in worldwide ticket sales.

Skoledebatt på amerikansk. Kan virke som om bedre muligheter til å sparke dårlige lærere, og betale de gode lærerene bedre, ikke er noen snarvei til bedre resultater allikevel?

“She’s got a very simple message that is highly seductive because it appears to give an answer to our difficult education problems,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning research group.

It would be great if her ideas translated into good results for kids, Kahlenberg said.

“But, in fact, we’ve got two grand experiments of her theory,” he said. “The first is the American South, where teachers unions are weak and the schools are not lighting the world on fire. The other is charter schools, which are 88 percent non-unionized. In charters, you can do everything that Michelle Rhee wants to do — fire bad teachers, pay good teachers more. And yet, the most comprehensive studies looking at charter schools nationally find mediocre results.”

So Rhee’s premise is faulty, he said. “But it’s a simple idea, and in the media, it’s powerful to have heroes and villains”.

Når man snakker om dagsaviser snakker man sjelden om klasse. Men avisene skaper ulike verdener for ulike lesergrupper, skriver Kajsa Ekis Ekman.

Man kan også si det slik: I tabloidavisene er kapitalismen skjult, i middelklassens abonnementsaviser er kapitalismen nærværende, men humanisert, mens i Dagens Industri står den fram naken. Om man tvang alle mennesker til å bytte avis i ett år ville dette antakeligvis ført til enorme sosiale forandringer.

Skyldes pedofili at man selv har blitt misbrukt i barndommen? Nei, sier forskere i følge LA Times, men de er oftere kjeivhendte. Hvem blir først til å kreve et register over alle kjeivhendte i nabolaget? For om det bare kan redde ett barn…

Like many forms of sexual deviance, pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a sexual orientation as immutable as heterosexuality or homosexuality. It is a deep-rooted predisposition — limited almost entirely to men — that becomes clear during puberty and does not change.

The best estimates are that between 1% and 5% of men are pedophiles, meaning that they have a dominant attraction to prepubescent children.

Not all pedophiles molest children. Nor are all child molesters pedophiles. Studies show that about half of all molesters are not sexually attracted to their victims. They often have personality disorders or violent streaks, and their victims are typically family members.

By contrast, pedophiles tend to think of children as romantic partners and look beyond immediate relatives. They include chronic abusers familiar from the headlines — Catholic priests, coaches and generations of Boy Scout leaders.

Other pedophiles are “good people who are struggling,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist who heads the Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit. “They’re tortured souls fighting like heck not to do this. We do virtually nothing in terms of reaching out to these folks. We drive it underground.”

Gunnar snakker om kultur, fildeling og filmen som åpen økonomi. Jeg tror jeg er enig i det meste her.

Svenskene skal visst slutte helt med tvangssterilisering. I 2013 var det kanskje på tide?

Trist sak det der med Aaron Swartz. Her er Washington Posts oppsummering av saken.

Og her er noen ord fra en som kjente ham:

I remember always thinking that he always seemed too sensitive for this world we happen to live in, and I remember him working so mightily, so heroically, to try to bend the world into a place more hospitable to people like him, which also means hospitable to people like us. I like what the blogger Lambert Strether wrote on my Facebook page (in Aaron’s memory, friend me!): “Our society should be selecting for the Aaron Swartz’s of this world. Instead, generous and ethical behavior, especially when combined with technical brilliance, turns out to be maladaptive, indeed lethal. If Swartz had been Wall Street’s youngest investment banker, he would be alive today.”

Vi har begynt å varme opp til premieren på Django Unchained kommende helg. Her er et lesverdig stykke om hvordan Tarantino snakker med seg selv.

And as a dream opens doors onto the ugliest parts of our psyche, “Django Unchained” casts light on an aspect of America’s past that most would rather not talk about or consider. Perhaps some of the critical response to these images says more about our culture than it does about Tarantino as a filmmaker or person.

Glenn Beck planlegger å bygge sin egen idealiserte versjon av…et eller annet?

The ambitious project, projected to cost over two billion dollars, has been heavily influenced by Walt Disney. As Glenn has been explaining throughout the week, Disneyland was originally intended to be a place where people would find happiness, inspiration, courage and hope. Over time, Walt Disney’s original vision has been lost. While hundreds of thousands still flock to the town, it’s become commercialized and the big dreams and the heart have been compromised.

Glenn believes that he can bring the heart and the spirit of Walt’s early Disneyland ideas into reality. Independence, USA wouldn’t be about rides and merchandise, but would be about community and freedom. The Marketplace would be a place where craftmen and artisan could open and run real small businesses and stores. The owners and tradesmen could hold apprenticeships and teach young people the skills and entrepreneurial spirit that has been lost in today’s entitlement state.

There would also be an Media Center, where Glenn’s production company would film television, movies, documentaries, and more. Glenn hoped to include scripted television that would challenge viewers without resorting to a loss of human decency. He also said it would be a place where aspiring journalists would learn how to be great reporters.

Across the lake, there would be a church modelled after The Alamo which would act as a multi-denominational mission center. The town will also have a working ranch where visitors can learn how to farm and work the land.

Independence would also be home to a Research and Development center where people would come to learn, innovate, educate, and create. There would be a theme park for people to recharge and have fun with their families.

People would also have the option to live in Independence, with a residential area where people of different incomes could all come together and be neighbors.

Det er på en måte litt trist at man må rope hurra hver gang noen står frem med takknemlighetshistorier og sier at vi har det ganske bra her i landet når alt kommer til alt.

Etter å ha vært en pliktoppfyllende arbeidstager i mange år, har jeg de siste ti årene ikke vært i full jobb. Til tider ikke i det hele tatt. Men jeg har klart å opprettholde et liv og en økonomi som gjør at det går rundt. Ikke et fett liv, men godt nok. Og det er takket være vårt fantastiske velferdssamfunn.

Dag Wollebæk skriver om tilliten i samfunnet, og bringer litt sårt tiltrengt faktakunnskap inn i debatten om den fabelaktige norske kulturen.

Det er likevel liten dekning for de mest apokalyptiske forestillingene om hva som er i ferd med å skje med tilliten i Norge. Fortsatt peker mange piler oppover. Den generaliserte tilliten har økt hos oss, mens den er svekket mange andre steder i verden. Utviklingen vil kunne påvirkes av omfanget av innvandringen, men forskningen tyder på at også andre faktorer vil være av betydning: Fremfor alt i hvilken grad det føres en politikk, blant annet på skole- og boligområdet, som motvirker utviklingen av parallellsamfunn.

Noen bruker blogg til å skrive seg gjennom en vanskelig oppvekst.

Ingenting er som ull i kulda.

Men blir det for kjedelig å sitte stille kan man jo f.eks lage en gigantisk kobra som ungene kan leke med. Av kubæsj.

When Piero Manzoni canned his feces and put it up for sale as artwork in 1961, he was driven by his loathing of “capitalist pigs.” But when Mikhail Bopposov, born the same year, created a giant cobra out of frozen cow dung, he did it for the children.

“I made it so the kids could play around and have some fun,” the native of the Siberian republic of Yakutia told RIA Novosti by phone Friday, speaking about his 400-kilogram creation.

The snake – coiled, with head upright and hood widened – is on display in the village of Yolba, about 300 kilometers east of the republic’s capital, Yakutsk.

Christopher Tolkien snakker med media for første gang på 40 år

“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

Slik tar du tilbake kontrollen over ditt sosiale nettverk, du begynner å blogge igjen

That’s a bit of a retro suggestion, because blogs have taken a back seat to other forms of expression in the past few years. The RSS feed never engendered the kind of reciprocal sharing and commenting that a well-designed social network does, and as a result, many people have migrated away from blogging.

(…) ”What’s changed in the past few years is that blogging started to feel a bit more lonely, because it wasn’t connected to these social news feeds.”

Her har vi en nettside dedikert til islam, muslimer, science fiction, og alt i mellom der. Kult!

Og her er det litt om hvordan det står til med science fiction i Kina.

Voldtektsmenn, hvem er de? Tja, ikke vet jeg, men mellom 4 og 8 prosent av oss menn gjør det. Gang på gang.

Undre Undreverset er ikke så veldig imponert over Mamma.

Denne saken stinker fra ende til annen. “Mamma” har ikke engang tatt seg bryet med å gå inn og slette sjikanerende kommentarer i sine egne kommentarfelt. De har ingen plikt til å la sjikanerende kommentarer stå. Indignasjonen deres over folks oppførsel tror jeg knappest noen gidder å ta på alvor. For øvrig vil jeg tro at “Mamma” nok har tjent ganske gode penger på dette oppstyret, der de nok har hatt et “pent” hopp i antall sidevisninger på nett, antakelig solgt noen papirkoper ekstra, fått økt oppmerksomhet i sosiale medier og solgt bilder videre.

Langt men ganske bra om vår tids superhelter, og andre helter, og hvordan de i grunnen er like alle sammen. Snart på tide med en ny type helt folkens!

Imagine a world where everyone is a superhero. Would you like to live there? Do you think it would be better than our own world? Or would it be worse? This is an important question, because judging by the most successful movies made in 2012, our country — and our world — really likes superheroes. We all know that the two highest-grossing films of 2012 were about superheroes – The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. The third major superhero movie released last summer was, The Amazing Spider-Man, which earned $262 million domestically. It was the sixth-highest-grossing movie of the year in American theaters. We tend to lump these movies together because they are all about costumed codenamed characters who originated in comic books. They are Superhero Movies.