Carcassonne 2009: London Zoo, part 2

More pictures from my visit to London Zoo, on my way to Carcassonne, France. August 6th.

A couple of butterflies, Lepidoptera, in the rather ... inflatable-looking butterfly house.

Look at this one, its wings are hardly even there. Weirdness. :-)

The otters, Lutra lutra, were of course adorable. Squee. :-)

A couple of green iguanas, Iguana iguana, in the rainforest house where I sought shelter from the rain.

Aww. I so agree, we can't imagine what it must have been like. But I almost wish we could. :-)

A sloth, Folivora, still in the rainforest house. In Norwegian these animals are called dovendyr, which means lazy animal. V. appropriate. :-)

After the rain let up, I left the rainforest house and made my way towards the African section. Where so many fascinating animals were on display!! Warthogs, giraffes! Zebras and hunting dogs! Okapis and toilets! Wheee!!!

An African warthog, Phacochoerus africanus. A face only a mother could love.

One of the giraffes, Giraffa camelopardalis, really wanted to go outside, but for some reason they weren't allowed to. Maybe it was too cold ... but on the other hand the door was partly open, letting the temperature in, so I'm not sure that makes sense. o_O

Oh, for the great outdoors ... !!

Don't do it like this

I've been thinking about jobs and the working life a lot recently. Here's the MADtv gang teaching us how not to perform in the workplace.

Journalistutdanning meg i øret

In today's post, I rant about Norwegian journalists and their deplorable lack of skill when it comes to writing their own language. Journalism school my ear.

Dette er noe som irriterer meg veldig ofte, for som kjent er norske journalister i stor grad talentløse tullinger som ikke kan skrive selv, men hovedsakelig klipper og limer saker fra utenlandske aviser. Dette gjelder først og fremst journalister som jobber i nettaviser. De folka må virkelig være oppsopet fra landets journalistutdanningsinstitusjoner. Hvis du ikke kan få deg en skikkelig jobb, så kan du i hvert fall få bruke cut and paste-skillsa dine i Dagbladets nettredaksjon.

Men i alle fall. Dette plager meg ofte. Og JA, jeg vet det, jeg kan løse dette problemet ved å slutte å lese nettaviser. Men hva slags løsning er det?? Og uansett, om jeg slutter så spiller det ingen rolle - jeg kan skrive feilfritt norsk, og samme hvor mye disse folka voldtar språket mitt kommer ikke det til å påvirke meg i negativ retning. Det kommer faktisk bare til å gjøre meg til en enda større språknazist. >:-) Men hva gjør de med vårt nasjonale språkøre? Hva slags skade gjør konstant påvirkning av dårlig språk med den store gruppa som i utgangspunktet er usikre på hva som er godt norsk og hva som ikke er det?

Tilbake til saken. Klipp og lim er hovedgreia du må kunne som Dagbla'-journalist. Magasinet-redaksjonen er et unntak, i hvert fall ganske ofte. Men i nyhetsredaksjonen er det virkelig patetiske tilstander. I så mange utenlandssaker er det SÅ åpenbart at de bare har knabba noe fra en utenlandsk avis og så prøvd å oversette. Det hadde kanskje vært sånn halvveis greit - hvis de bare ikke hadde vært så jævlig dårlige til å oversette!! Her er eksempelet som inspirerte dette innlegget. Jeg klikker ... !!!

Israelske soldater avslørte gigantisk våpenlast fra Iran - Hevder Iran skulle supplere Hizbollah med tunge våpen. Er det MULIG ... !! Nei, som sagt, jeg klikker når jeg leser sånt. Her har det i originalen stått noe à la følgende: IDF allege that Iran was to supply Hizbollah ... og så har man trodd at det norske verbet å supplere betyr det samme som det engelske to supply, fordi det høres ganske likt ut og fordi man er en kjempeidiot. Men selvfølgelig stemmer ikke dette; to supply betyr å forsyne. Å supplere er noe helt annet og gir ikke engang mening i denne sammenhengen. Det eneste bruken av dette ordet tjener til er å avsløre at man har knabbet artikkelen og at man ikke er i stand til å oversette den skikkelig. Men det skjønner man ikke fordi man er en sånn talentløs tulling.

ARGH ... !!!!!

'Carcassonne: New World'

Remember that I mentioned buying a new Carcassonne game a couple weeks ago? My birthday present to myself. :-) Well, I made a kind of video review of it. Don't know if it's a very good one ... but here it is, anyway. :-)



If you've never played Carcassonne, but you want to try, don't get this particular game. :-) Get the original game - it's the one in the blue box - and if you want to make things a little more interesting, get the Traders & Builders expansion too. That'd be the best place to start, IMHO. :-)

Coincidence in garbage handling

Another of those weird coinkydinks ...

There's been a documentary series running on TV here for three weeks, the last part of three was shown last week. It was called Connecting People (you can see some of it here), and it was about the life of the common cell phone ... you got to see where the metal in your phone comes from, coltan from Congo and so on. Then they showed how discarded phones and other electrical items are handled in this country (rather shoddily, it would appear) and finally how the phones end up as garbage in China where they pollute the ground water and poison the locals. OK, obviously it was more complicated, but you get my point. It was really interesting. And it made me feel slightly proud of myself for only having had four cell phones in my life, and never replacing them until they are well and truly broken. Anyway.

The town in China that they singled out as being the hellhole last destination of your beloved Nokia was Guiyu, a town I had never heard about before seeing the last part of this series last week. And that at least is no coincidence, apparently. Chinese authorities aren't exactly broadcasting the existence of this place ... a town where the groundwater has become so polluted in only a few years that they now have to bring in drinking water from neighboring towns. And they even have their own river. But it's dangerous to drink from that now. :-( Just by the very little we got to see of it in the documentary, it's pretty much a hellhole. Partly thanks to all of us.

One thought I had while watching the panel discussion after part three: one of the participants (the woman from the SFT) said that here in Norway, we're soo good about returning electrical items and not just discarding them with the rest of the trash ... we return our hazardous waste (which it's illegal to export from this country) ... more than 30 kilos per person. In the EU it's apparently only four kilos per person. And she made out like that means we're so good and all that shit. But doesn't it in a way make it even worse - because obviously it means that we do have those 30 kilos to return or discard? Doesn't it actually mean that we're overconsuming like crazy? :-(

And here comes the coincidence. I finished a book today, Gomorra by Roberto Saviano. I'm sure you've heard about it. It's all about the Camorra, the criminal clans that infest the city of Naples and its hinterlands. This book inspired me more than anything with a feeling of profound gratitude. Hallelujah, I'm not Italian!!! Not that I need anything more than the mere existence of Silvio Berlusconi to make me feel that, but still. The last section, which I read this afternoon, was about one of the main reasons for Italians to hate & despise the Camorra and its activities - the enormous amounts of money these mobsters make by illegal garbage handling, and how they poison southern Italy. I mean literally poison it. This part of the book was a real eye opener, I had no idea it was that bad. Read it and weep. :-( The coincidence was that when Saviano was talking about this network of trash that generates so much money and so much suffering, Guiyu came up again. As one of the places outside of Europe that the Camorra exploit for their own gain. Isn't that weird, how you go 33 years without ever hearing of a place, and then suddenly there it is twice in one week? Huh. I wish I had heard about this particular place under more pleasant circumstances, though. All of this was just so sad and messed up.

A lot of thoughts have been going through my head as I've been seeing and reading these things. As I'm sure you can imagine.

I can only conclude that humanity is screwed.

Fake but fun

Anyone remember those HewlettPackard commercials where famous people talked about how their lives were so great because they had HP computers and shit? Well, this one isn't one of those. It's ... inspired by those. Made just for fun. I think it's pretty good anyway.

Quote of the Week

I love cruelty. It’s my favorite thing in the world.
David Walliams