Sometimes it is rather annoying to read a detective story which your friends haven't read. I mean of course when you think you have been terribly clever and worked it all out before the detective has. Because you cannot tell anyone what you think the solution is in case it is the right one. This is doubly true if you have had another theory earlier, which you have now had to abandon or revise. Any attempt at sharing your genius with the world at large must be so vague as to be completely useless as a corroboration when you close the book and say "hah! I was right!".

This is my main objection to A.A. Milne's (no, not Winnie the Pooh) The Red House Mystery. It is excellent. I find it a little shocking that nobody took the time to introduce me to it earlier (perhaps there is a reason why my edition of it is labelled "A rediscovered classic". Someone clearly forgot about it).

It does the formal detective story ("whodunnit") very well. Better, perhaps than any other formal detective story I have come across. Which may be why I got there before the detective did: contrary to popular belief, most formal detective stories don't really give you all that you need to know before the dénouement; they merely provide the illusion that they do. Usually, the coherence of the plot is a retroactive affair in which the reader looks back over what he (or ...

It is one of those things: nobody ever tells me about the good films. Nobody ever says,

Really, Camilla. You would love this film. It is excellent. I loved it, and I know you would, too. I am not resting till you see it. Because it is that great.

That may be because I am picky and have turned down too many suggestions because of one thing or another. Or it may be because people simply assume that I don't like good films. Or it may be because I simply don't listen when people say "that's a good film". Either way, nobody told me to see In Bruges. Well, Tor may have. Actually, I know he did. But the title didn't sound engaging. It sounded like it was either going to be a boring film or an action film, and I don't often feel like seeing either. And so I didn't see it. And Tor really should have insisted.

About a year later, I have now seen it. And can I just say, it is bloody brilliant. Actually, bloody and brilliant. Brilliant, not in the sense that it glows or reflects light, but in the transferred sense of glowing with goodness and spirit and genius and humour. The film itself is frequently rather dark. Again in both senses.

It is really surprisingly dark (in the figurative sense of dealing with things in themselves not cheerful or bright) for such a funny film. I suspect ...

Dette skrev jeg om albumet Ys for drøyt tre år siden, november 2006:

Det er midt i november og høstmørket er over oss. Ute traver menneskene forbi, med det mål for øyet å tilbringe minst mulig tid utendørs. Slik fremstår det for meg i alle fall, og hvem kan vel da, med novembers våte, kalde klo friskt i minnet, klandres for å drømme seg vekk til fjernere strøk og eventyrlige steder. I en periode hvor mørke morgentimer og svarte nattetimer utgjør en stor del av dagen, da er det sannelig godt at sangfuglen Joanna Newsom er klar for å gi oss en reise inn i en uovertruffen og velmøblert musikalsk verden.

‹‹Ys››, som albumet heter, har et lydbilde jeg ikke har hørt maken til. Det er svært ulikt det meste annet av musikk som kommer ut nå for tiden. Det er ikke helt folkemusikk, ei heller er det rent klassisk musikk eller populærmusikk. Det er vanskelig å sette inn i en spesiel bås, men det spiller ingen rolle. For Joanna Newsom spiller, synger og tryller frem vakre lydbilder så elegant at ord rett og slett blir fattige. Kort fortalt er det et album du ikke visste du hadde gått rundt og ventet på. Joanna Newsoms stil er kanskje inspirert av typisk vest-afrikansk kora-musikk, eller lignende fortellertradisjoner; en musikkart med fokus på historiefortelling og musikkens evne til å fungere både som stemningssetter og aktivt element i historiene. Det er også tydelig gjennom sangen, og kanskje mest av alt fraseringen, at Newsom ...

Comic books are where my geek credentials fall flat. Well, not entirely flat, of course: I know what they are, can name some major companies (well, Marvel and DC, anyway) and characters, and I do own a few. But the ones I own and the ones I read only ever reach me when they are already published in coherent bindings as books and after the stamp of approval has been put on them in some way or other. I.e. Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sandman or the like. I am beginning to feel confident when it comes to Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman, but it has taken me many years; and I still feel confused and a little out of my depth when confronted with Avengers and Justice Leagues in various shapes and guises.

I had heard of the Eternals, but I had no real grasp of the concept or really any idea of what it was all about. All I knew was that the Eternals were … well, eternal. With superpowers. And fancy costumes. Basically gods. I have since learnt (from my recent reading of Gaiman's Eternals, in fact) that there are gods in the Marvel universe, and the impression I took away was that the gods are puny compared to the Eternals. And the Eternals are fairly puny compared to the Celestials.

It may be that someone with a better grasp of Marvel and Kirby would appreciate this book more than I did. As soon as I understood ...

For a while now, I've been planning to write a book. Or actually, several books. I like to write, and I believe I have produced something like two or three rather hefty, WoT-sized books if I add up all my writings on Calcuttagutta, so I feel pretty sure I have it in me to write one or more books. I just haven't had time yet. And thus, my plans to become an author have remained at more or less the same level of completion, or rather uncompletion, for years. However, I have recently realised something important about the nature of things, and this discovery has the potential to make me start writing, although not one of the books I originally planned to write.

I am currently lecturing a physics course at the university. I lectured the same course last spring, and I will lecture it again next spring. This is the first time I'm lecturing a course for the second time, and while preparing my lectures over the last few weeks, I have discovered two things:

Firstly, it is seriously awsome when you are able to find your notes from last year, and even more awsome if you are still able to read them.

And secondly, the probability of finding, and indeed being able to read, notes written one year ago would be greatly increased if I had typed them up nicely in LaTeX and kept them on my computer.

In other words, what I have discovered ...

I find it pretty difficult to write about the good SF that came out in the sixties and seventies, because a part of me always wants to go, “It was very ____, for its time,” which is not really a very helpful thing to say. But Larry Niven’s Ringworld took up a bat, smashed all my “for its time” cliches and laughed at my shock and pleasure.

Louis Wu is 200 years old, and he’s just ditched his own party to teleport through time zones to make the day last a little longer. He exhibits your usual signs of ennui and “back in the good old days”, so it’s an unsurprisingly good thing when Nessus (a Puppeteer, a race of aliens with beautiful voices and two heads [two heads! why do we not have more SF with people who have two heads? They are ALWAYS awesome]) kidnaps him and makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Nessus recruits Wu for an exploration mission whose details are currently, conveniently, left vague. He goes on to recruit Speaker To Animals, who is a Kzin (catlike aliens! also awesome!) and Teela Brown. Teela Brown is recruited not because she is a woman, but because Nessus believes she might be one of a new generation of lucky humans.

Louis Wu at this point earned my dislike, since he spent a great deal of time trying to get Nessus to choose someone else, or Teela to refuse Nessus’ offer. Since Nessus ...

So, some of us have excellent friends who buy us tickets to see Waiting for Godot and then come with us to see it. (To be quite honest, Motley Productions could have advertised for the play a little more efficiently, but I daresay someone who followed theatre news with more avidity than I would’ve known about it – actually, someone did. still. One would not know unless one were looking for the information. This is why Bangalore’s theatre scene is torpid, darlings. It’s not us, it’s you.)


Anyway, we arrived on time, got in fine, yaddi yadda. We paid serious attention to the gravely ponderous IFA infomercial. (The background music suggested that someone important and beautiful was going to die tragically any moment.)

Finally. Estragon wrestled with his shoe as Vladimir walked on. My friend (henceforth referred to as R.) and I never quite warmed to Akash Khurana’s portrayal of Vladimir – it felt always like he was portraying someone else, from some other play, using V’s lines. (Too, R. agrees with me that his behaviour with the little boy who announces Godot’s absence was a little creepy.) Benjamin Gilani as Estragon is delightfully natural and unnatural at once, just as a Beckett speaker should be.

The play didn’t drag – though one did tend to phase in and out simply because the dialogue demanded we do some thinking. Even Pozo and Lucky couldn’t keep R. following the linear narrative (such as it is ...

Det hender jeg blir litt deprimert når jeg leser nyhetene.

I dag leste jeg en artikkel om en mann som siden han giftet seg med en makedonsk kvinne i 2007 regelmessig hadde banket henne slik at hun, og jeg siterer

besvimte og kastet opp blod, og en hjørnetann i overkjeven sprakk,

og videre

Da politiet kom til stedet, forklarte mannen at han ofte kranglet med kona fordi hun ikke ville innrette seg etter hva han sa.

Han forklarte at hun ikke var den kona han var blitt lovet og sa at han ønsket hjelp fra politiet med å få sendt henne hjem til Makedonia.

Bare det viser vel at det er snakk om en alvorlig forstyrret voldsmann uten begrep om hva som er akseptabel oppførsel. Da jeg leste videre kom det også frem at

Mannen hadde nemlig terrorisert kona med grov vold og drapstrusler siden høsten 2008.

...

Han skal blant annet ha slått henne flere ganger med knyttet neve i hodet og i mage- og ryggregionen. Flere ganger ble hun slått så hart [sic] at hun besvimte.

Han skal også ha truet med å partere henne og legge henne i fryseboksen.

Andre ganger skal han ha sagt at hun skulle bli sendt hjem til Makedonia hvor han kjente folk som kunne ta livet av henne.

Hva er forsvaret? Jeg siterer videre

Mannen sa i Heggen og Frøland tingrett at en kone alltid skal adlyde sin mann og sine svigerforeldre og at selv om han skriker til henne, skal hun ikke ...

Som et ledd i en fullstendig skamløs og stadig eskalerende fremheving av egne tidligere artikler vil jeg i dag trekke frem artikkelen, Å måle lysfarten med enkle remedier, som jeg skrev i forrige uke. Jeg er forresten bitter for at ingen fysikere og/eller data-mennesker har kommentert denne artikkelen, for seriøst, er ikke dette litt funky?, men det er ikke det som er poenget mitt i dag. Poenget er at i denne artikkelen refererte jeg til en enda tidligere artikkel, som jeg skrev for et års tid siden, nemlig Å måle lydfarten med enkle remedier.



Denne artikkelen handlet om et demonstrasjonsforsøk Matteus og jeg gjorde for studentene mine, der jeg prøvde å måle lydfarten i kald luft, ved å helle flytende nitrogen oppi et plastrør og så sjekke hvordan resonansfrekvensene endret seg. Dessverre funket dette eksperimentet heller dårlig. Flytende nitrogen holder en temperatur på -190 grader eller noe slikt, og ved den temperaturen skal lydfarten være noe slikt som 180 m/s, mens vi kom frem til rundt 300 m/s.

Nå begynner det å nærme seg lab-tid igjen, og det betyr at jeg har begynt å tenke på hvordan jeg kan sette opp et mer nøyaktig forsøk som måler lydfarten i kald luft. Det beste jeg har kommet på så langt er at jeg kan gå på verkstedet og be dem om å lage meg et metallrør som er kanskje 30-40 cm langt, og som er tett i den ene enden. Så trenger jeg en liten høyttaler, og en ...

I gangen vår på univeristetet har vi vårt eget lunsjrom. Jeg vet ikke helt hva det egentlig er tenkt til, men det er på størrelse med et litt stort grupperom, det har bordplass til omtrent 15 stykker, litt for få stoler, og vi har printerne våre stående der inne. Og et kjøleskap og en mikrobølgeovn. Av og til er rommet i bruk til forelesninger, hvis noen av de som sitter her i gangen foreleser et fag med få studenter, av og til er det i bruk til møter, og hver dag rundt tolv er det i bruk til lunsj.

Det finnes også en prosjektor (projektor? prosjektør? projektør? projekteur?) der, som vanligvis er i bruk hvis noen holder lunsjforedrag, slik jeg gjorde for et par uker siden, da de andre forlangte å få vite hva jeg egentlig har drevet med i høst.



Nå har imidlertid noen bestemt at det ikke er nok med en prosjektor. Vi må ha en pc også. Og grunnen til at man har bestemt dette nå er, slik jeg forstår det, at det pågår et slags vintersports-treff i Canada et sted, og da er det tydeligvis veldig viktig å se på tv i lunsjen. Nå nettopp, for eksempel, så vi flotte bilder av et ungt par som danset på skøyter. Det så ut som om de hadde det gøy, helt til mannen bestemte seg for å plukke opp damen og kaste henne avgårde slik at hun nesten falt. Etterpå var det et intervju med dem, der de ...