Blogging for life

It's a baby blogging boom! Friend Frode is expecting a son - and the soon to be citizen Trym has a blog all waiting for him!

"The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land." [Thomas H. Huxley]

Nephew Blog

My brother is home with Morten now, and it's blogger-mania! :-)

"It is a wise father that knows his own child." [William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "The Merchant of Venice", Act 2 scene 2]

In full color

Have received a few comments today as the biggest business newspaper in Norway (Dagens Næringsliv) mentions and has a big picture of me.

"Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man." [Arthur Hays Sulzberger]

Democracy

Election for parliament in Norway on Monday. I'm disappointed and worried that so many Norwegians have fallen for the charisma and simplified answers of the brown outer right wing party. It's sad to see people, who don't know how well they are off, start blaming and fearing the weakest or the ones who aren't like themselves.

Forgive them not, for they should know what they do.

"The rational man seeks the truth gropingly, he knows that his reasoning is only probable, that other considerations will arise to make it doubtful; ...he is "open." He may even appear hesitant. But there are people who are attracted by the durability of stone. They want to be massive and impenetrable, they do not want to change: where would change lead them? This is an original fear of oneself and a fear of truth. And what frightens them is not the content of truth which they do not even suspect, but the very form of the true--that thing of indefinite approximation...They want to exist all at once and right away. They do not want acquired opinions, they want them to be innate; since they are afraid of reasoning, they want to adopt a mode of life in which reasoning and research play but a subordinate role, in which one never seeks but that which one has already found..." [Jean-Paul Sartre]

If you stands for nothing you fall for anything

As a public critic of the Church of Scientology I am very used to character attacks against myself. People claiming to be from the police or private investigators contact friends and acquaintances trying to find my "dirty secrets". "Reporters" call my colleagues all over the world asking leading questions like "What is your comment about your colleague in Norway being involved with terrorists?". They ask leading questions loaded with lies to slowly build suspicion about me. They have even put up a hate page filled with untruths about me.

The cult is these days on a new offensive to try to, what they call, Dead Agent me. As a critic of this cult I am Fair Game to all Scientologists. No act against me is punishable for them.

Luckily my case is well known in the media here and most people out there are intelligent enough to see through the lies. All attacks against me only increase the support I get and adds to document the ugly reality of Scientology.

Intimidation and threats will not stop me from using my freedom of speech to protest this criminal and abusive cult. It only confirms the importance of standing up against it.

Please let me know if you are contacted too.

"This is correct procedure: Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies. Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them. Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely admit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way." [Scientology internal policy letter on how to handle critics: HCOPL "Attacks on Scientology"]

Wikipedia

I have to be honest and admit I am a bit proud that I'm mentioned on Wikipedia. Gee, how do you react to that??

"Each of us does what we can do. Our obligation is to do it as well as we can, with as much grace, dignity, integrity and honor our egos can tolerate." [Robert Vaughn Young]

Pictures as my life happens

With a lot of help from my friend I finally got a Picture Blog on my site. My idea was that I wanted to just take a picture wherever I was and the camera (in my mobile phone) would instantly and automatically put the image on a web page. AND NOW IT WORKS! Big hugs to Frode, it's fun to be a geek. Check out the link to Picture Blog in the menu.

"Primus in orbe deos facit timor." (Fear created the first gods in the world.) [Caecilius Statius (220-168 B.C.), Thebais]

Firstborn

My brother has had his first born! A wonderful boy just named Morten. And I'm 600 kilometres away. I have to get a jet plane or something.

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'" [Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation]

More photos

I've finally updated my on-line album with lots of pictures (see under About Me in the menu).

"Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth." [William Purkey]

You don't have more fun than you make yourself

I had the most amazing day.

When I turned 30 I was deep in sorrow after the loss of my big love. When I digged myself out of that underground cavern I promised myself that I would not allow my 40th birthday go unnoticed.

The only problem with the teenage years is that you don't know how damned lucky you are and you don't see your opportunities. That will haunt you for a couple of decades. The thirties is a mess, you try to cling on to your lost youth. To me it was great to turn 40. I survived the thirties without too deep scars.

I turned 40 in December 2004. December is the month when all of corporate Norway have their "julebord" party and there is no way you can get a decent place or get all together. I was determined to do something when I turned 40, but moved the event to February 4th 2005. And I had a fantastic party. We were 66 people, with great food and lots of drink. We Norwegians aren't good at socializing, we are a bit shy. To bring 65 people together from 20 years of living in this city (Stavanger) was a hoot! At least for me. Offering good food helped a lot. It was the party of my life! Imagine being surrounded by the people that means the most to you for a whole evening and half a night.

I'm now only thinking about what I will use my 50th birthday for. All I know is that it's going to be great, that is, if I manage not to fall out of love just before. All I am sure of is that it will be sooner than I can imagine, so you better start preparing! :)

A TOAST The soul may be a mere pretence, the mind makes very little sense. So let us value the appeal of that which we can taste and feel. [Piet Hein]