As I was walking home tonight, I listened to Migrapolis on my iPod. It’s a Norwegian radio show about multiculture, identity and immigrants. Last week they interviewed the daughter of the “king of the gypsies” in Norway, who never went to school, and grew up to become a drug addict. Finally, she decided to kick [...]

It’s that time again, when the semester is drawing to a close, and summer is soon upon us (at least those of us with a trimester system, which gives incredibly long summers). This year, it starts even earlier, because we don’t have any exams at OISE. Next week, I am going to CIES in Charleston, [...]

Image via Wikipedia Peter Suber’s Open Access News has recently posted on two Norway-related Open Access developments. In both cases, the actual policies were in Norwegian, and in PDF files. I thought I’d try to ferret out some of the details and share them with the readers of this blog, and of Open Access News. [...]

I spent a year studying in Sweden, and really enjoyed getting to know better our neighbour, that Norwegians always make fun of (they tell us the same jokes back, with Norwegians in the stupid roles, so it works both ways). I love the Swedish language, and often read Swedish novels, or download audiobooks (my latest [...]

I don’t know why, but the Swedes produce a lot of good speakers. Hopefully most of you have already seen one of Hans Rossling’s presentation, if not here is one from TED 2007. And just today, through Eirik Newth’s blog, I found a link to Fredrik Härén, a Swedish guy who went to China to [...]

In a few days Norwegians will vote for local and county representatives, and of course the newspapers and TV channels are full of debates and analysis. Today I watched the equivalent of a town hall meeting with mostly representatives from the national parties in Northern Norway on our state television channel (link in Norwegian). The [...]

I am very intrigued by design, and think I recognize good one when I see it (although I cannot for the life of me create it myself), and so I thought it was interesting when I came across a blog that does nothing but post frontpages of newspapers and discuss their design. I originally came [...]

A visionary project in Austria, replacing all ads and logos in a space with one color. And all the businesses cooperated. Stian