In a yet unprecedented onslaught of sheer ignorance, Dansk Folkeparti (right-wing party in Denmark) has demanded that swine be on the menu for kindergartens and elderly people’s homes – at least in the amount of 20% of the meals. (Part of this story, for those not in the know, is that Dansk Folkeparti is against anything they do not consider ‘Danish’, this not the least includes foreign religions and cultures.)
Hans Kristian Skibby, running for city council in my home town, ‘admits that an arrangement around swine flesh could create problems for a lot of Muslims and Jews who don’t eat swine, but he does not think this is something that should be taken into account. “I know it can be a problem some places, since a lot of people do not feel like eating swine, but that should not stop us from meaning that this should be the case in Denmark”‘
He proceeds to stating ‘Especially healthy or unhealthy? I am no dietitian, but in Denmark, there is a tradition through many generations, that in this country we can eat pork roast and frikadeller [traditional Danish dish]‘.
Not that I am surprised. Dansk Folkeparti is just banging on their old drum: An underlying agenda of harassing anyone who is different, especially Muslims, until they get enough and leave the country.
But, Hans Kristian Skibby, just so you can take this into account: I am by any standard Danish. I come from several generations of Danish ancestors – not that this should matter, but I have a suspicion that to Dansk Folkeparti it would – and I do not eat swine. In fact, I do not believe it’s good for you, and I choose to not eat it. And no matter what you might think of the Danish’ness around this, I would hate to end up in an old people’s home at one point where I would have to eat swine just because someone like yourself do not think this is ‘Danish’ enough.
Denmark and being Danish should be about more than eating ‘flæskesteg’ and ‘frikadeller’ – good as it may be. It should be about respect for freedom of thought – ‘det danske frisind’ – also towards those that think differently than us. But then again, Dansk Folkeparti has never really wanted this. They want only to cling to a shallow, narrow definition of what is Danish, thereby hollowing out any essence of its true ideals.
Source: http://politiken.dk/politik/article833614.ece
november 12th, 2009
The other day, as I was buying a bus-card from the Narvesen kiosk at Oslo S (the Central Station), I got a radically different view of ’smågodt’ (candy you mix yourself in a bag). A couple of guys that looked like they could handle themselves quite well kind of lurked between the boxes, would randomly take up a piece, lick it, and then place it back in the box – ready for the next customer to eat. So much for smågodt!
oktober 21st, 2009
Former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen alledgedly pays back about 0.5 million DKK of salary that he is entitled to from the Danish state as a kind of ‘late compensation’ after starting his new job as NATO General Secretary (read article at politiken.dk). Not taking any political stands for/against the man, I believe this generous gesture commands a great deal of respect.
august 15th, 2009
For those who are not in the know, lately there has been an ongoing issue with Iraqi refugees taking shelter in a Danish church after having their request for asylum denied.
What you may need to know if you’re not from around here is that traditionally, churches in Denmark have been a refuge, as safe-place, for people such as these who have exhausted all other options, and it has traditionally been unthinkable to send police into a church to exercise force there.
In addition, large groups of people (see for instance kirkeasyl.dk) have gone into this case offering their voice and protest against the decision to send these people back to Iraq, on humanitarian grounds. And as politiken.dk’s editor in chief, Thøger Seidenfaden remarks, this would have been entirely possible within the laws of the land.
Nevertheless, Wednesday night, police broke into the church and arrested the Iraqis with the intent of sending them back to their home country.
I’m actually not sure on where I stand on the matter of these refugees. On the one hand, should I decide, they would be allowed to stay in Denmark, but on the other hand, we have a judicial system in Denmark that are supposed to deal with matters of the law. And when it so happens that the deciding sections of the government have deemed that according to Danish law these people should be sent home, it is problematic if precisely they are allowed to stay just because a lot of people have gotten emotionally involved. In Denmark, we have – mostly – a working legal system, where if you want to change the laws of the land, you do that by exercising your democratic voting rights, and influencing your elected representatives in ‘folketinget‘ (the legislative body of the Danish government). I can be just as sad as most left-wing activists of the rhetoric used against foreigners in our country and the laws laid down to ’shield us from the bad [insert whatever here’, but Denmark still remains a democracy, where, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – we need to respect the majority opinion, even if it sucks (in our view). Well, unless we are so much moved that we feel an obligation to enter into civil disobedience.
Which on this night, a lot of Danish citizens felt called to do. I am not to judge if this was right or not. However, what upsets me the most (and I know the kirkeasyl.dk folks would probably disagree with me on this one, seeing as they are all in this for the refugees), is the way the police appear to have handled the situation against people peacefully protesting against the police carrying out this order. True, they were blocking the way of the police, but have a look for yourself on some of the shots taken by politiken.dk this night: video.
This reminded me of the conduct of the Italian police once I were in Rome when they were taking on huge groups of activists who appeared to be up to nothing else than thrash the neighbourhood while setting fire on containers and running around with home-made axes, shields, and all other sorts things.
However, this is not a case of such revolt. This was a case of people moved by their conscience to sit themselves peacefully down on the road so that the police could not take these refugees away.
When I saw this video it made me angry. The conduct of the police as displayed in these takes are simply unacceptable. You do not use the baton against people already lying on the ground having been beaten down. You do not strike more times than absolutely necessary to split the crowd; anything else than that is clear excessive force. You do not strike people in their back as they are running away. You do not slap people in the face with your fist simply because they bad-mouth you. Fair enough that the police needed to use appropriate force to remove the people blocking their way. But the impression this gives of the police is not appropriate, it is excessive. And this is a fundamental problem, for if the executive branch of power does not take every measure to ensure that it acts appropriately when exercising force, trust in the democratic system will break down. Especially the last sequence on the video where a young woman receives 8 blows with the baton some of them while she is getting up and running from the beatings are upsetting. For once, I agree with Anders Samuelsen in seeing this as ’sickening’ and something that should not take place in a properly functioning democracy.
And what is more, the conduct of the police in this case appears to be simply an extension of the overtones from the Danish government when addressing the issue of refugees and immigrants. As remarked before, it could have been well within the law to let these people stay. But there appears to be an immense pressure from the government to all its branches to take the strictest possible interpretation and apply it. One may wonder if legislative branch of the government has not gotten too busy sending other signals as well, than simply laying down the law. Or rather, if the legislative branch has ever been purely legislative.
august 15th, 2009
Recently ordered some books from an unnamed bookstore (which is generally awesome). At checkout, I was given an error page, so I tried 3-4 more times, and each time, I got the same error page. Eventually, I returned back, and it worked. I did not receive a confirmation mail for more than one order, but nevertheless wrote their support in a slightly annoyed tone. Today, I receive a reply to the effect that the order had been drawn 4 times from my account, but they had canceled all but one order, and the money would be refunded. Great. So I write a slightly annoyed reply back, and get a sincere apology. This is when suddenly I realise something.. The books I was ordering were very Christian books.
I’ll tend to run in the park. For some reason – and I was really happy about that – Café Church decided to give me a t-shirt a while back; I often wear it when I run. That is, when I don’t forget I’m wearing it. And suddenly remember after sending some too-smoking people a disapproved look, or looking too long where I probably would be better off taking Job’s advise and averting my eyes.
This is what’s been hitting me more and more recently: No matter if we want it or not, we are, as Christians, walking billboards for what we profess. In a very real flesh-and-blood kind of way. Which is really great – the message of Jesus incarnate; when we display Him.
I’m not advocating flawless Christianity, or that we should ‘get our act together’ (nor that there are not extremely kind, loving and good people out there who are not Christian). I just find it interesting, that in the middle of the hype of ‘transparency’ in so many Christian circles, transparency suddenly hits us right between the eyes where we expect it the least.
juli 27th, 2009
So a couple of weeks ago, I had a one-day visit from a couple of Newbold people, and in the honour of the 4th of July (and seeing as I got a can of pumpkin from one of them), I decided to make a pumpkin pie!
Results were apparently quite good 
Basically used the recipe at joyofbaking.com, without the pecan and gingersnap layer and with some added vanilla suger. Nice!
juli 20th, 2009
So I was at the wedding of two good friends last week, which I wasn’t planning to blog much about, except: (this was really awesome) as the (excellent) dining was over, and we moved to more comfortable seating where the entertainment took place, somehow the newly wed couple in an unexpected move of surprise turned the whole thing into church, right then and there.
And so, right there, as we were sitting with our coffee, beer and whatnot around little tables, there was a flashback of something reminiscent of Aarhus Café Church old days style at their wedding reception, though with a decidedly new touch. Complete with thoughts from the bride and groom, worship songs and such. It really felt like the mode for a short while was changed and we were no longer at a wedding party, or rather, we were, but suddenly we were also in church! (which was nice, seeing as practical reasons made it hard to do earlier in the day)
I don’t know what you think when you hear this, but I thought it was really cool. To the wedded couple: Keep this up, and you’ll do amazing stuff!
juni 20th, 2009
Just randomly check my stats, and saw that one of the most used search terms to land on this blog is ‘church of raabjerg’. This strikes me as a strangely odd thing to search for…
juni 6th, 2009
So I just went to the ‘camp-meeting’ of the Adventist church in Norway (where, by the way, I’m staying for the summer). For those that don’t know what this is, it is where many members of the Adventist Church get together for sort of a day of fellowship.
First thought: It was nice. For various reasons, it’s been a couple of weeks since I last had the opportunity to worship with other believers, and that was really nice. Raafat Kamal – known better to some of us as Nat’s dad – gave a very forceful talk about the mission of the church, especially touching on the way we deal with people. Spot on.
Second thought (why am I putting this in bullet-point fashion?): It seems to me – it may not be so though, cf. a conversation I had in the car on the way back, but still, it seems to me – that often we can classify people in our church as belonging to two groups: Those that have their focus on the here and now and those that have their clear focus on his second coming. Within the Adventist Church, with our background and tradition, the latter translates to having a heavy focus on our being in the end time, the coming trials, the call to come out of her (interpretations of Rev 18.4), historical prophecies, and the signs of the times. The latter group seems to be more ‘mainstream’ in their Christian thinking, and generally (i) focus less on these things, while (ii) focusing more on the difference God can make in their lives here and now, the walk with God, the kingdom of God being at hand, and so on (if this group speak of the second coming, it is usually in quite general, more mainline, terms, and not as a focus-point; it’s just part of the bagage). Many times when people step up to the platform to sing a song, contribute with their thoughts, or take part in a debate, I get the feelings they are likely to belong to one of these groupings. I also get the feeling that the directions in which these groups are heading are not the same.
It would be nice to see a synthesis, or a direction that would maintain both, of these two foci – the here and now and the second coming / eternal life – if nothing else, because it seems that both Jesus and Paul managed to have them coexist in their thinking and doing and life. True, this picture is stylised, and I also see a more healthy middle ground in the church, but this seems a minority. I don’t have the answer on how to do it – my theology is probably flawed as well – but I recognise the need within our church for some sort of integration. Much of what has seemed integration up to this point to me does not seem so, since there is often still a lack of focus on the kingdom of God among us, as especially laid out by Jesus in the Gospel of Mark (forgive me if my labelings are not entirely consistent or my thinking not crystal-clear; I hope it still makes sense on some plane of thought). The music program did a good job of trying to integrate though. That was quite good.
Third thought: I have been able to be near – in different settings during the day – a small number of ‘core families’ that seemed to be working very well. It’s funny how you can usually tell when you come into the presence of such a family – the way they interact, the way they treat each other, the implicit respect the parents enjoy from, while not commanding of, the children. Simply a good solid family. Yes, solid is the word. Not coming from such a family myself, I may be more prone to picking up the difference. Whenever I meet people my age who has grown up in a solid family like this, our whole instinctive feeling about marriage seem to be completely opposite. For me, it has been interesting to note that for some people, it would be a strange and foreign thought to worry about the ‘what if’’s and the potential problems (true, some of it may be personality-related, but still I see a pattern). They simply assume, by instinct or experience, that things will work out fine.
Fourth thought: Norway is a really beautiful country. Driving up to Tyrifjord is simply amazing.
juni 6th, 2009
So today, having a fever, I took a bath. Having recently seen the movie Pi, where Sol paraphrases the story, and possible as a result of my feverish condition, I began to ponder the Archimedes principle of displacement. The quote from Pi goes:
“The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he’s received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks – insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife – she’s forced to share a bed with this genius – convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he’s entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that’s a way to determine density – weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams ‘Eureka’ and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king’s palace to report his discovery.” (Sol’s point is that Max needs to ‘take a bath’ to solve his problem, but this quote spurred my interest, apparently)
Not remembering the quote exactly, I seemed to remember something about weight, and claims being made that the amount of water displaced were somehow related to the weight of the object, but I couldn’t get it to make sense that anything but the volume of the object would determine how much water it would displace. Enter google: Search archimedes gold displacement.
It seems reasonable to go from the top, and this site is on a .gov domain, carries the emblem of the US department of energy, so it seams at a 10-second glance to have some reliability. While, when reading it again, the scientists answering do not appear to give any outright wrong information, they don’t at all seem to convey the essence of the story. And when initially reading it, I strongly got the sense that some of them were arguing for a heavier object displacing more water than a lighter object (of the same volume).
Right, let’s try link 2: Now, suddenly, the crown under inspection could be partly silver instead of iron (as claimed by the first site), and this site is more or less about posing a critique against the method anyways, ending up suggesting a setup with scales, reminding me of the epic scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Sir Bevedere goes ‘we shall use my largest scales’.
Browsing through the google-list once again, my eye caught (after having discarded link three as relatively unuseful for my purposes) a debate at ‘Science forums’. This debate again reminded me of the debate preceding the use of Sir Bedevere’s largest scales in the forementioned movie. A guy called Vexer seems determined not to get it, and during a full 2-page discussion seems to hold that the water displaced has to do with weight and not volume.
While scrolling down the list further, my eyes catch something most welcome: What looks like an authoritative source indeed – the Encyclopædia Britannica in it’s very person (the linked page was followed through a couple of additional links). However, my rejoicing is short, since you can read about 5 seconds off that page, before a nag screen pops up asking you to register. So I took a screenshot of the info and read it at my leasure. It seems that indeed, the volume of water (or any fluid for that matter) displaced by a fully immersed object is – dam dam dam – the volume of that object; irrespectable of its weight I might add (while it is of course true that the upward force has to do with the weight of the object, and so becomes relevant for determining to what degree the object will be immersed). Which incidently is the same conclusion found (albeit in even more understandable terms) at Wikipedia. Which adds another point to the trustworthiness of Wikipedia.
So I’m happy; I got confirmed what I initially thought to be true (which raises again another set of questions on the biasedness of my inquiry). However, what’s the point of writing it here, or, as one of my lecturers like to reiterate, ’so what?’
I had a chat with my dad yesterday evening about postmodernism and the pluralistic society in which we live. He thought much of it had come from technology (perhaps somewhat like Lyotard). And I was reluctant to accept that (there must be more). However, as this little exercise confirms, on any given topic – even the ones we consider to be very established and universally true – we can find a host of both confusing, opposing, and confirming information, since anyone with a keyboard and Internet access can contribute even further to the confusion (you and me both).
I think my dad said something about how it used to be simpler. I agree. Maybe I’m missing a bit of that simplicity, even though I’ve never experienced it, or rather, I’ve probably experienced it growing up, since as a child, you tend to trust your authorities much more. I don’t think I’d like to go back though.
And even further, within especially religious communities, there tend to be those groups who view everything as being very simple. I am envious. However, I find it difficult to go back. And yet I agree. It is very simple. But perhaps simplicity is about choice, and that choice starts out with examination. And entails inspection. And then perhaps in the process, we learn which voices to ignore and which to include.
februar 1st, 2009
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