Caveat
I have spent over one and a half year of my life living in China, and a significantly larger part visiting it, learning the language, watching movies and soap-operas, reading blogs, discussing it with Chinese and non-Chinese, and in general thinking about it. There is still so much I don’t know or understand, but it […]

This post is not about what to do to avoid having your backpack stolen in China. Although scare stories about criminality abound in China, I think it’s a lot better than most other places - especially for foreigners. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of scams going around, especially involving cell phones, but that’s a […]

There is of course no doubt that what America needs most of all is neither Clinton, nor Obama, but Amitabh Singh Bachchan (somehow I managed to get his name wrong the first time around) for president. I don’t think I will ever really understand the racial relationship in the US between blacks and whites, but […]

(Read about the background here, and here). An update on the copyright buying project, from [i:boekoe], taken from an article in Kompas, March 27, 2008.
The Department of Education has bought the copyrights of 37 books in 2007, and will buy 250 titles more in 2008. The books will then be accessible through the internet and […]

There has been a ton of mashups of speeches from the American primaries, but here are three amusing ones - two Latino songs about Obama, and one where he (surprisingly) performs a Bollywood hit. America needs a president that can perform Bollywood song and dance numbers to restore its standing in the world!

Stian

Although it was Eurocentric, I like to think back at the time when all serious scholars in Europe were expected to know at least French (and by association perhaps Italian and Spanish), German, English and some Greek and Latin. When you read a book, and there are frequent citations in those languages, that are not […]

Sometimes the world seems to be going in the right direction. The sun outside is beautiful, even in the cold Toronto weather, and I just found out that Obama won all three primaries along the Potomac, and the Harvard faculty voted yay to institute the first faculty-initiated open access mandate.
Stian

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 […]

I have been following the Burma protests, carefully optimistic, hoping that the great powers will take this opportunity to speak up and be pro-active, especially the other ASEAN countries. Now it looks like that is not going to happen, although I keep hoping, impressed with the great courage displayed by the citizens of Burma.
I came […]

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 […]