Out of the way

I have been playing with programming again.

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It has been a long time since I have really lived in Australia, although I visit it a number of times a year and feel comfortable there.

Some thoughts, from my old dining table

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I've been offline for a while.

I went to Finland for Assembly. I went with friends to Estonia for a few days. I came back to Finland. I met up with more friends here. Gorm, Velmu, p01, Cooper's, Anna, Yitzhaq, Georgi, Detroit, Chou, Antti, Mediumgeek, Balder, thanks.

I ate raw cloudberries, drank them in cider, and in a strong liquor. I have only ever had them as a sweet liqueur before. I saw Suomenlinna, Tallinn's old town, three cemeteries in two countries. I realised I had never consciously looked through an islamic section in a cemetery before, and wondered why have a road between orthodox and other christian graves. I never quite made it to several beaches, but did dip my toes in various bits of the Baltic. I drank at an Australian bar, an "Australian-like" (how??) bar, and didn't bother paying to go into another one. I ate at an African restaurant and drank tonic in the Depeche Mode bar, spoke french in a finnish kebab house, bought a new Astérix (well, two - they were cheaper than I had dreamed of) and read old stories. I lit a candle in a hole in a rock, and was gladdened by one on top of a rock. I travelled by plane, train and car, by hydrofoil and ferry-boat, by tram and on foot.

I came here to sit in a yard in the countryside by a piece of rock, with a couple of friends and a few words. To pay a debt never contracted with a couple of coins, to have a quiet drink and see some flowers and trees.

I came here to see a place I never saw before, to find something new, to look for something I may have lost, to search for answers to questions left unasked.

I came here to work, to sleep, to wake up and talk to people and work until I slept again.

I've been busy for a while. Time to return.

That's the sound that I like to hear. It used to be a constant noise coming from under the stairs, but it has been years since I heard it at all.

Living in Oslo, the price of beer is extremely high. Norway seems to think that it can discourage people from drinking and smoking by adding enormous taxes, and heavily restricting sales.

The result is apparently mixed. I was told by a colleague, but haven't checked, that while Norway has the lowest official per-capita alcohol consumption rate in Europe, it has the highest rate of alcoholism and is suspected to have one of the highest rates of moonshining.

It's about a year since I squeezed my beer-brewing equipment into a suitcase and brought it to Oslo. And finally, a year later, and 7 or so years since I last did it, I have a brew bubbling away in the kitchen. Bitter, but mixed with honey, so could take a while and turn out interesting. Original gravity 1040, quantity about 20 litres. I guess I will know by Christmas how it turned out.

In the meantime, I can go into the kitchen and listen to it slowly bubbling away.

It's strange, how the world is filled with vice presidents. In American companies I get the impression that they like to have dozens of them, although there are probably only a handful except in enormous organisations. The United States itself, is really a pretty big organisation, despite the various cries for "small government" coming from conservatives. Over the years, they tend to approach the problem by appointing a few well-qualified people (for example, they went to school with the minister, or they play golf with him...) to a standing commmission to examine why there are so many standing commissions.

I was at a school which was organised into houses, like classic english "public" schools (so-called I think because the public aren't allowed in). We had two vice-captains in our house. One was appointed, and the other was elected. The elected one was unofficial, and got his post by convincing everyone that he had engaged in more vices than anyone else in the house (about 75 boys from 14-18). Most of these vices were against the rules, and a number of them, given he was not a legal adult, were also against the law.

Norway is a society that seems fairly down on vices. Alcohol is not illegal, but high taxes, and limited availability seem designed to discourage regarding it as part of everyday life. In Oslo you can get beer up to 4.7% alcohol content in supermarkets during the week until 8pm, on saturday until 6pm, but in some places only the nearest "vinmonopolet" - a government-owned monopoly that is the only place allowed to sell anything stronger - has beer, along with fairly short shopping hours, and in many cases just a counter where you ask for the assistant to fetch what you want from an invisible store.

Drinking in public is illegal. Someone told me once that there is a law that prevents people drinking in the park. But you only have to visit the park to realise that while it may be illegal, it isn't a very well-respected law. Smoking is prohibited in all enclosed places with public access, or which are workplaces. As far as I know they haven't gone as far as Melbourne, Sydney, or Los Angeles, forbidding it in various open public spaces such as beaches. But tobacco is extremely expensive, as is anything associated with smoking.

Prostitution is, I think illegal. Which, like everywhere else, is a law that apparently makes no difference at all - Oslo has an unofficial red-light district which is neither as "picturesque" as Amsterdam's, nor as depressing as those in Italy (which are generally a gloomy stretch of highway near town). Whether the prohibition actually provides the basis for a framework of corruption and protection, as it used to before Australian states legalised it and began to try and make it a clean, if not actually amazingly respectable or respected, industry, I have no idea.

Australia is a nation of gamblers - although in fact most people only gamble on being able to pay a ridiculously large mortgage one day (the dream of ownning a home is getting further and further from ordinary people , even those prepared to take on this huge financial burden), and on the Melbourne Cup. Like most places, Norway has a lottery, where the government takes money from people who probably can't afford it, and it has horse racing, trotting, and so on. There are also poker machines in pubs, although I don't even know if they have entire casinos.

Sex shops are legal (I presume there are assorted laws about pornography, but I have never really bothered to find out). Norwegians are meant to be, at the same time, extremely open and easy-going about sex, and extremely uptight about personal relationships. Actually they are just people.

As a western society, various companies are trying to sell things we don't need, and a fair proportion of those seem to think that adding a picture of naked or nearly naked women somehow conveys the message that, for example, one brand of plant food has been developed with a better research process than the other. (It's a made-up example, although I am sure that somewhere it could be discovered to exist).

More respectable businesses show naked people of both sexes. A recent poster campaign for a shopping center followed a naked couple as they had a baby, I guess to symbolise the impending (re?)opening of this lovable place.

They're either fooling themselves, or trying to make fools of us. Almost all the research says that women are generally not particularly interested in photos of naked people, and men are particularly interested in photos of naked women. So by adding some stuff that nobody cares about (the bloke), they appear to be respectable and about balance. Although it doesn't take a lot of thinking to realise that it's a cover for doing what everyone else does - using photos of naked women to appeal to a market segment.

I am not especially averse nor immune to pictures of naked women, in general. (I don't know if it's genetic, marked somewhere on the Y-chromosomes that inhabit my body, or a leaerned behaviour, or something else. I'm not that concerned about finding out). Unlike tobacco, alcohol, foie gras paté and electronic gadgets, sex is a fundamental requirement for humanity. Which is why social interaction is almmost universally considered necessary. That doesn't make it always wonderful, mean that anything that can be done should be done, or anything else. It doesn't seem at all clear to me why it is something that should be dangled in front of people to convince them to switch brands of lawnmower, or buy a ticket that statistically has no possibility of bringing untold wealth which can somehow compensate for a broken relationship by providing the guy/girl of some advertising fool's dreams. Although I understand why people seem to keep using it like that.

George Michael, Pope Benedict the latest, and Hugh Hefner, are all famous people who have suggested that (at least in certain circumstances) sex is a good thing. I'm inclined to agree with them about it being good, at least in certain circumstances. I am not so sure I agree about the particular constraints or freedoms each would suggest are important, but society is a balancing act.

But it is intriguing how often those who seek to impose their control on us, and particularly those who seek to impose some ethics-based system of self control, focus on sex as one of the important vices that we should be circumspect about.

And where does all this waffle come from? An article, in which an English sporting body changed its mind (having originally said it was OK) about allowing a club to be sponsored by a legitimate business, which has its retail outlets in prominent public places, because it is a "sex shop". (No, it doesn't sell sex, just things you can use for sex. Although there is probably not much you can't, with a bit of imagination - yet this has become a massive industry taking millions of dollars, euros, roubles, crowns, and so on).

I suppose it is reasonable to set some standards about what is an appropriate sponsor for a recreational organisation that involves children as well as consenting adults, especially one based on something as important as cricket is to the English. It just seems, as the quoted club official pointed out, a bit inconsistent coming from a league sponsored by various alcohol businesses and a gambling outfit.

Still, society is a balancing act. There are plenty of people who are offended by the existence of shops selling things whose purpose is, in their eyes, repulsive, unnatural, or exploitative. Although myself, I find pubs can be a positive influence, as much as they can be a destructive one. I suppose the same might apply to sex shops, although as far as I can tell they are neither, just more places that turn titillation into tills ringing as the punters put down their pelf in pursuit of a mostly delusionary dream. (Or was that betting outlets, or blogging sites selling an unlimited audience?)

I used to look at the stars, and I used to recognise the Southern Cross, Orion and not much else. When I looked at Orion in the Northern hemisphere, I suddenly realised that I could indeed see a person in it.

When I came back to Australia, as always, I looked out at the night sky from the plane. Since I have been here it has been clouded over, so I haven't seen the stars, and as always from a plane window I couldn't see anything much and pretty well nothing I could recognise.

In Melbourne I went to the Dan, as I usually do. Jetlagged and exhausted I spent the first hour drinking Soda water, as I normally don't. It's a place I have been going to for a long time. Recently, it seems that a friend stopped going there, which is a shame. But I keep going back there, and I pretty much always feel at home, whether I know everyone who is in, or only a couple of people. It is a place with lots of history for me, a place I feel at home, even though it is just a pub.

I actually don't look for Orion as much as I once did. It will always be there, which is nice to know. But it sort of feels a bit odd sometimes. I'd like to see the Southern Cross while I am here though (although it seeems that I might not get to).