Author Archives: Stefan Geens

Googliografi: Jan Yoors

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Första i serien: Viola IlmaDen första gången jag bodde i New York var mellan 1976 och 1982, som barn, och då gick jag på UNIS, den United Nations International School. Där fanns bara en till person som pratade flamländska som jagAllright already, I relent. Tough crowd. Here is the translation of my Swedish homework for the week:
 
The first time I lived in New York, between 1976 and 1982, as a child, I went to school at UNIS, the United Nations International School. There was only one other kid who spoke Flemish like me, or so I remember. His name was Kore, and his father was an artist. We weren’t friends exactly, but our parents knew each other.
 
I thought Kore was a little wild, but I also felt a little jealous. His father died suddenly in 1977, and eventhough this was tragic, it seemed to me like he now had a very free life — that he could do as he pleased. And he lived in the exotic Greenwich Village, while my family and I lived in the boring upper east side.
 
In 1980 we were 11 years old, but while he knew about CBGBs and The Ramones, I still thought the B52s were a type of airplane. And when John Lennon was murdered in December of 1980 I did not know who he was, eventhough I had a favorite opera, Carmen, and a favorite conductor, Herbert von Karajan.
 
Kore’s father, Jan Yoors, had had a very interesting life. When he was 12 he had run away from home to travel with the Roma. Later he would write a book about the Roma, and it is to this day one of the few books that describes their life from an insider’s perspective.
 
During WWII he acted as a liaison between the Allies and Roma who were behind Nazi lines. In 1943 he was even arrested and condemned to death by the Gestapo, but managed to escape. After the war he went to London, where he learned the art of tapestry. In 1950 he went to New York, where he established himself as an artist. His life in Greenwich Village was bohemian, perhaps inspired by the Roma; he had two wives, for example. When Jan Yoors died in 1977 he left behind many full-scale tapestry patterns, which his wives continue to weave (interesting link, this one) to this day, in the studio in the Village that I visited in the 70s. Yoors’ art is perhaps not as hot as it once was just now — massive tapestries were all the rage in the huge lobbies of the skyscrapers that sprouted in the 60s and 70s, so perhaps they might now remind some of corporate art, even if I think they are very calming, peaceful works.
 
It must have been strange to be 12 years old and know that at this age one’s father had run away from home. Maybe that was why Kore acted wild, in my eyes. In the meantime, he too has become an artist. Like father like son, in the end.. Han hette Kore, och hans far var konstnär. Vi var inte kompisar, men våra föräldrar kände varandra.

Jag tyckte att Kore var lite vild, men jag kände mig också lite avundsjuk på honom. Hans far dog plötsligt 1977, och även om det var tragiskt, verkade han vara mycket friare än jag därefter. Han fick göra vad som helst. Och han bodde i exotiska Greenwich Village, medan jag och min familj var trygga på tråkiga upper east side.

1980 var vi 11 år gamla, men medan han kände till CBGBs och The Ramones, till exempel, trodde jag att B52:or var ett sorts flygplan. När John Lennon mördades i december 1980 visste jag inte vem han var, även om jag hade en favoritopera, Carmen, och en favoritdirigent, Herbert von Karajan.

Kores far, Jan Yoors, hade haft ett mycket intressant liv. När han var 12 år gammal hade han rymt hemifrån för att resa med romerna. Senare skulle han skriva en bok om romerna, och den är fortfarande en av få böcker som beskriver deras liv inifrån.

yoorssmall.jpgUnder andra världskriget var han kontaktperson mellan de allierade och de romer som fanns i nazi delen av Europa. 1943 blev han anhållen av Gestapo, och dömd till döden, men han lyckades fly. Efter kriget reste han till London, där han lärde sig väva gobelänger. 1950 åkte han till New York, och blev en känd konstnär. Hans liv i Greenwich Village var bohemisk, som romernas; han hade, till exempel, två fruar. När Jan Yoors dog 1977 fanns många vävmönster kvar. Fruarna fortsätter än idag att väva dem i studion i Village, som jag besökte som barn i 70-talet. Hans konst är dock inte så populär som tidigare just nu. Stora väggbonader var jättepopulära i de Amerikanska bankernas lobbies på 70-talet, så nu erinrar det lite om företagskonst, även om jag tycker hans konst är helt rogivande.

Det måste ha varit konstigt att bli 12 år gammal och att veta att ens far hade rymt hemifrån i samma ålder. Kanske var det därför Kore var så vild. Jag hade ingen sådan förebild. Under tiden har han också blivit konstnär. Sådan far, sådan son.

What is it like to be Elizabeth Costello?

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In Elizabeth Costello the novelCoetzee’s latest novel to come out in paperback here in Stockholm is currently on sale during the annual countrywide book sale/reading frenzy. Elizabeth Costello the novelist gives a series of lectures on topics that clearly interest J.M. Coetzee the author. Costello is not Coetzee’s mouthpiece, however; she gets a generous hearing, but we get hints that while she and Coetzee know the same things, her perspectives are that of another person — perhaps an older, waning person.

One of Costello’s lectures is a passionate defense of animal rightsThis part of the novel was originally published by Coetzee as the novella The Lives of Animals, delivered as a lecture at Princeton University in 1997. The Nation has a great review.. In the middle of her speech, just as her daughter-in-law whispers to her son that “she is rambling,” she begins a critique of Thomas Nagel’s famous essay, What is it like to be a bat? Nagel argued that even if we can imagine what it is like to behave like a bat, we cannot ever know what it is like to be a bat, because human mental states are just too different from those of bats — for starters, we can’t sense sonar.

Costello’s retort is twofold: First, she can make inroads into imagining her own death (so why not an animal’s life?):

‘For instants at a time’ his mother is saying, ‘I know what it is like to be a corpse. The knowledge repels me. It fills me with terror; I shy away from it, refuse to entertain it.
 

‘All of us have such moments, particularly as we grow older. The knowledge we have is not abstract — “All human beings are mortal, I am a human being, therefore I am mortal” — but embodied. For a moment we are that knowledge. We live the impossible: we live beyond our death, look back on it, yet look back as only a dead self can.

Second, novels work because “there are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination.” And if that is the case, “if I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster…”

Later, it struck me: Elizabeth Costello the novel is really an essay entitled “What is it like to be Elizabeth Costello?” Coetzee wants to know: To what extent is it possible to imagine what it is like to be her or someone like her? Not just behave like an elderly person, but be one?

It’s a question I never really asked myself when I was 18, but which I have pondered more often in recent years. Perhaps we can at then least answer the question “What is it like to be 35?”
Answer: You wonder what it is like to be 70. I’m sure in part it has to do with both surviving grandparents — my grandmothers — now being in their early 90s.

One grandmother is as sharp as ever, living unassisted, devouring crosswords and French novels when not cheating atrociously at Solitaire or ScrabbleWhy do the elderly cheat at games so much? Have they learned a lesson in life we haven’t yet? I’ll put down phoney words at Scrabble but that is allowed. Feeling for blanks, however, is beyond the pale.. Every so often, matter of factly, she mentions that she won’t be around for much longer. I’ve noticed myself (and others) hush her on such occasions, telling her she will likely outlive us all, or mock-chiding her for her morbidness. I think these episodes reveal more about us than about her, however. At her age, death is not something you can put off thinking about. It looms. It is we young ones who grow skittish when compelled to contemplate death. But I wonder if we are not doing my grandmother a disservice by denying her an opportunity to give voice to such thoughts. I wonder if it is something that the elderly talk about when we are not around.

My other grandmother lives in a dementia ward. She is frail, often confused, and tires quickly. It is as if she has a surfeit of memories to process, but only as if, because that’s not really what I suspect she is experiencing. In fact, I am not at all sure I am able to imagine what it is like to be her, in part because when I attempt the exercise I find myself using mental faculties that I suspect I need to imagine no longer having.

Contemplating her existence doesn’t provide any new intellectual insights. We know consciousness is not a binary notion, on or off, a matter of being awake to the world or dead, but a collective, a group effort prone to slow dissolution. Yet what is it like to feel your identity ebbing? Could someone not in her state write a convincing novel about a protagonist who is?

There seem to be several different challenges to overcome, then, when trying to think one’s way into the existence of an elderly person. I can think of three. Perhaps the easiest is to imagine being physically frail; after all, we’ve all broken a bone or been bedridden. Then there is the matter of acquiring the right perspective — from near the end of a life, from where you can count with your hands the number of summers left to you. And finally, in some cases, the challenge of imagining being on a trajectory into mental unbeing.

I will probably live to find out what my grandmothers are experiencing now. It will be too late to compare notes with them, though.

Multipod moments

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I happened to me this morning, during the commute, on the 52 bus: the first verified multipod moment on Stockholm public transport. By multipod moment I mean me noticing two white iPod earbud-toting co-passengers in addition to myself on a bus or subway carriage. I’ve come across other iPod users individually before, while using my own, but as I don’t feel my presence should influence the results of measuring such chance occurences, true multipod moments really should exclude the observer’s iPod.

My first ever multipod moment happened in January 2002 in New York, on the N/R line on the way to Wall Street, some four months after the original iPod was introduced. iPod densities are likely the world’s highest right there. By now, I’d be surprised to find a rush-hour carriage there that does not have multiple iPods on it.

Multipod moments are not as arbitrary a notion as you might think. In the minds of the iPod-less people (iPLP) on the bus, one white earbud-clad person is weird, but two of them is fashion, and who doesn’t want to be in fashion? Multipod moments on public transport are Apple’s tipping point.

The semantics of terror

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This blogging week in Sweden, an incipient but promising debate about the semantics of terror soon morphed into a heated argument about motive, (un)civility and bias in the participants. While this is an interesting meta-debate all by itself, it did eclipse the original question somewhat, and I happen to think it important. Hence this ruminative Saturday morning afternoon post.

Historical context:
Earlier this week, SVT’s Faktum explored the possibility of redefining the term “terrorism” to include a slew of state and police actions, and also acts of violence against women here in Sweden. The pseudonymous Alicio wrote an exhaustive rebuttal that contained both substantive points and ad hominem ones (in the technical sense of the term). Ali Esbati, until recently head of the youth wing of the Left Party, responded in kind to Alicio. Then everybody had a say about who was more out of bounds.In debates about terrorism I think it would be helpful to first agree on the terminology, so that all parties know what precisely is being discussed. Too often, this kind of debate involves shifted semantics; the interlocutors argue past each other because they don’t first manage to agree on which words signify which concepts precisely.

I think this happens easily with the emotionally charged topic of terrorism, and I think that it happened specifically in the case of the blog fallout surrounding Faktum’s program. I also think Faktum itself was sloppy in fulfilling its journalistic mandate. No, not because it was biased (it was), but because it omitted interesting and important points that could have fleshed out the debate on its way to a perfectly acceptable biased conclusion. It would have been a much better program had Alicio’s critique been anticipatedOn public television, I don’t mind individual programs that show bias, as long as the channel overall is balanced. I do mind badly made programs.; his substantive points are excellent.

What I think is happening is that the word “terrorism” has gradually been invested with a vernacular meaning that is much broader than the original narrow definition. The vernacular meaning is normative and emotive — the word has practically become a synonym for “heinous act,” a silver medalist to genocide’s gold in an olympics of evil. The narrow definition of terrorism is drier and legalistic, and although there is wiggle room for emphasis, there are clear boundaries as to what it is notMy own version contains these tests for determining if an incident can be labeled terrorist:
 
1. Is the act one of violence or a credible threat of violence against individuals?
 
2. Is the aim to target civilians? (civilian victims as collateral damage in military targets, or as a result of a mistake in the fog of war, don’t count)
 
3. Is the purpose to coerce changes in public policy by instilling fear in the civilian population at large? (The Unabomber and Columbine don’t count. The anthrax attacks in 2001 do (and they were even successful in altering public policy))..

Terrorism then is a class of violence, a legal classification upon which a body of international law has been built. I think it is a pity that the term “terrorism” has also become a shorthand for any especially egregious act of violence, or even just all acts of violence in the name of causes one is opposed to. To conflate these meanings involves descriptive smudging, and in the process we lose the opportunity to pin down arguments in a debate. I don’t mean to say that the vernacular concepts that have come to be attached to the word are useless — I’m saying that we need to give them separate signifiers, so that we don’t run the risk of arguing past each other.

If I understand Faktum correctly, what they are trying to say is that this smudging is encouraged by “the powers that be” in order to whip up in the public the kind of hysteria that excuses all manner of heavy-handed state actions. My problem with their report, however, is that they haven’t chosen a particularly helpful method of making their point, because all they do is “smudge back.” I don’t know if this is supposed to be some kind of clever underhand agitprop, or a turning of the weapons of the mighty back against them, but the tactic of relabeling as terrorism everything that breaches a certain level of moral outrage does not strike me as an honest attempt at resolving this semantic mess. Rather, it looks to me like they’re wallowing in it.

A case in point: Faktum could have (should have?) homed in on a few specific incidents of violence in the Palestinian Territories and dissected them. Here is an example I prepared earlier 🙂 Three blog posts from July 2002, reactions to an Israeli missile strike on an apartment building in Gaza that killed Hamas commander Salah Shehada but also 14 civilians. I’ll reproduce the most relevant bits here:

Today’s Ha’aretz editorial calls the Gaza strike an act of state-sponsored terrorism. I don’t agree, but only because I like to quibble semantically about the proper use of the term “terrorism” — the word should be used to describe acts that deliberately aim to inspire terror in a civilian population. […]

What Sharon is guilty of is pursuing a military objective with wanton disregard for civilian life. His mindset is the same mindset that allowed Hiroshima and Dresden. […]

The moral difference between terrorism and what Sharon ordered is small, though. If you know with certainty your actions will cause civilian casualties way out of proportion with any military or political objective, then intent is irrelevant. If you order a missile strike on a city block, civilian casualties are not a mistake.

[…] If Sharon had known that Salah Shehada was hiding out in a city block full of Israelis, would he have made the same decision? In other words, is a Palestinian 3-year old’s life worth less than an Israeli 3-year old’s? To Sharon, I have no doubt it is, even if he is not fully capable of articulating this to himself.

Rereading this now, I’m veering more towards Ha’aretz’s assessment: One effect of the strike was to signal to Palestinian civilians that their safety does not figure in collateral calculations. To the extent that Sharon intended this to be a message to Palestinians as a motivation to alter their stance towards Hamas, it satisfies my definition of terrorism. Still, killing civilians was not the primary aim here. The missile attack would not have happened had Salah Shehada not been in the apartment building. It is a case of Israel skirting the border between legitimate defense and state terrorism, and in this case stepping across the line.

But me changing my opinion here is not such a big deal. The immorality of the strike in my mind isn’t altered by this legal reclassification. Nor does it change my conviction that a suicide bomber blowing herself up on a Jerusalem bus is a much starker case of terrorism, and also more contemptible — there is the complete absence of a military objective, for example. It is clear to me that the legality of an act and the morality of an act need to be considered separately when judging it in its totality, because while there are infinite gradations of (im)morality, there are only a few for illegality, so there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence.

The gray zone between what is terrorism and what is not is a place of nuance that all such debates should visit. Faktum fails to explore it.

Elsewhere in the program, the semantic smudging takes a turn for the ridiculous. Guantanamo is terrorism? It involves torture and illegal detention, but not terrorism, obviously. Violence against women is terrorism? It is illegal and it is immoral, but is it perpetrated by groups who want to change public policy? No. The invasion of Iraq is terrorism? Regardless of its legality or otherwise, it was a good old-fashioned war with military targets; it’s not automatically terrorism if you think it illegal.

What about resistance movements to military invasions? Faktum is correct in saying that invading powers are often quick to label such movements terrorist, even if the resistance only targets the military. This does not mean that resistance movements can never be terrorist, however. In Iraq, for example, the Baathist resistance has now blatantly adopted terrorist tactics against civilians, especially Iraqis.

In a nutshell, then, here is Faktum’s faulty methodology, made possible by semantic sloppiness: First, an appeal to the vernacular definition of terrorism (“Guantanamo is an outrage, hence terrorism”). Then, the claim of a legal equivalence with other acts of violence that do pass the legalistic test for terrorism (“Both guantanamo and suicide bombings are terrorism.”). Finally, the positing of a moral equivalence for these acts based on the shared terrorism label. (“Guantanamo shows that the US is no better than Hamas.”The logician in me compels me to point out that while it is still possible for the conclusion “the US is no better than Hamas” to be correct, it is certainly not because of this argument.)

Or did I miss something?

Ämne: Utropsteckenomanerna

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Hi!
 
Did you know that when Swedes write emails, they tend to use a lot of exclamation marks? Practically on every line! I think it’s because they were enthusiastic early adopters of email – literally! – and the practice stuck.
 
I don’t in fact know if this exclamatory writing style predates the internet, as I wasn’t here then, but I doubt Strindberg injected such gusto into his missives!
 
With friendly greetings,
 
StefanTill: Bloggläsare

Ämne: Utropsteckenomaner

Hej!

Har ni märkt hur när ni skriver e-post, ni brukar använda många utropstecken? Nästan på varje rad! Jag tror orsaken är därför att ni antog tidigt e-post, och på ett jätte entusiastiskt sätt! Och det blev en vana, nu även på engelska. Nu har jag börjat också!

Jag vet faktiskt inte om ers grova utropsteckensbruk föregår nätet, därför att jag inte var i sverige då för att kolla, men jag betvivlar att Strindberg skrev sina brev med sådan stor förtjusning!

Med vänlig hälsning,

Stefan

iKapsel Hasa

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The iPod Shuffle arrived en masse in Stockholm yesterday, and I stood in line to acquire mine — they were selling like semlor and looked about as delicious.

Cut to the few things that struck me about the Shuffle that I have not yet read about:

  • It brings back an unheralded feature from the first generation iPod that was excised in subsequent models: Click buttons. With the 1G, you could keep it in your trouser pocket and peck away at it through the fabric on a crowded commute. This might have looked slightly perverse, but I could tell which the Next/Fast Forward button was by feeling its relative position, and use it to skip tracks in a shuffled lineup. This was all I needed to do for the duration of a commute — and the Shuffle is basically that feature, productized.
  • The Shuffle’s size and weight are in effect negligble, which makes the wall of sound it can produce all the more shocking. I wanted to take it out jogging right away.

    • Oh, and today I learned that att avfukta means to dehumidify in Swedish, and not what you might think it means.

    On the applicability of the Juche Idea to the Nordics

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    Minutes of the inaugural meeting of the Kungsholmen cadre of the Sweden-Korea Friendship Association, Feb 20, 2005.

    In attendance: Comrade Geens — Acting Chairman

    Meeting called to order by the Acting Chairman, who moved that he be made Permanent Chair and also elected Vice Chair, Secretary and Executive Member. The motion was unanimously approved.

    Agenda Items

    ItemThe threat from the South

    It was brought to the attention of the cadre that recent news from the southern end of the peninsula was disturbing, and of a distinctly putschist toneGreat Leader’s own definition of Juche, for the benefit of neophytes:
     
    “Establishing juche means, in a nutshell, being the master of revolution and reconstruction in one’s own country. This means holding fast to an independent position, rejecting dependence on others, using one’s own brains, believing in one’s own strength, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving one’s own problems for oneself on one’s own responsibility under all circumstances.”    . Namely, the Malmö Group for the Study of the Juche Idea has renamed itself the Swedish National Committee for the Study of the Juche Idea.

    The Kungsholmen cadre was unanimous in adopting this statement in response to this deviationist development:

    It is a wrecking activity, a naked power grab by pseudoprogressive petty-bourgeois groups in the South. Juche means a rejection of lackeyism, and we in the North will not stand by idly as this clique of Gorbachovite upstarts tries to usurp our own Study of the Juche Idea, all in the name of so-called unity.

    This is no time for passivism, so we call on the proletarian masses to recognise who their true revolutionary vanguard is — we the Kungsholmen cadre! At the same time, we anticipate that irredentist babble will emanate from the South, so we pre-emptively declare: The Kungsholmen cadre is not a splittist bloc, but just as the People’s Republic of Korea stands steadfast against the international gansterism of ruling cliques in the South, so too shall we reject the Malmö clique’s flunkeyism, which so directly contravenes the very basis of Juche. Did not Malmö vote for EMU in the referendum? Is that not a clear indication of its capitulationist impulses?

    Malmö must toe the correct line — Dear Leader’s line. And with Dear Leader’s toe.

    ItemSwedish edition of Dear Leader’s The Juche Philosophy Is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy publishedThe English version can be found here.

    The cadre noted with approval the publication this week of Dear Leader’s seminal discourse in our native Swedish tongue, and endorsed wholeheartedly the estimation that “It clarifies the idea that the Juche philosophy serves as a revolutionary philosophy and a political philosophy of the Workers’ Party of Korea and principled issues arising in studying and explaining the Juche philosophy.” The cadre expressed expectation this will make Study of the Juche Idea much easier for Swedes.

    It also cannot wait to find out what the correct Swedish is for the discourse’s concluding phrase, “All the social scientists must study the Juche philosophy in depth and breadth and propagate it in line with the Party’s intention and, by doing so, exalt its greatness and further increase its attraction.”

    At one point in the meeting, the Vice Chair of the cadre falsely opined that when we say “Study” we mean “swallow hook, line and sinker,” and this erroneous outburst was vigorously rectified. The Vice Chair said he had merely put his tongue inside of his cheek when speaking, so it was decided not to mete out disciplinary measures this time. One more such outburst, however, and he will be able to leave his tongue wherever he likes.

    ItemApplying the Juche Idea to the Nordic Countries

    It was proposed the cadre should not just Study the Juche Idea, but also investigate its applicability to the Nordic Countries. To this end, it was suggested that an invitation be extended to Rikard Stenberg, Chief of the Malmö Group for the Study of the Juche Idea and teacher at Marumo Secondary High School in Sweden, to give a talk at an upcoming meeting on this topic. The cadre noted with approval his rapturously received speech “Fresh Upsurge in the Struggle for Independence and Social Development Taking Place in the 21st Century” at the European Conference on Juche Idea and Issues of Socialism in Moscow in 1999.

    Another option was inviting Christer Lundgren, Chairman of the Swedish Preparatory Committee for Celebrating Dear Leader’s Birthday, instead. An article from 2002 was noted with approval [Swedish] in which he writes:

    In Korea it is clear that it is the US who is not following its end of the bargain from October 1994. Everyone who can read can convince themselves of this, even if the Bush regime now tries to call Pyongyang as the party in breach of this agreement.I Korea är det uppenbart USA som inte har följt ramavtalet från oktober 1994. Var och en som är läskunnig kan övertyga sig om detta, även om Bushregimen nu försöker utpeka Pyongyang som den avtalsbrytande parten.

    The cadre expressed hope that recent events will not lead the author of this commendable screed into futile second-guessing.

    Both individuals were further applauded for their steadfast antirevisionism by refusing to acknowledge the so-called documentation of widespread human rights abuses in the People’s Republic, some of which are audaciously presented in this article, “North Korean Human Rights: A Story of Apathy, Victims, and International Law” [PDF] from Stanford University. The cadre could barely stomach it, due to its blatant defamatory tone towards Dear Leader.

    In the end, it was decided the Kungsholmen cadre would research the applicability of Juche to the Nordics all by itself, thus embodying Juche in its approach to Juche. Subcommittees were formed to Study each of the three components of Juche (political, economic and military independence) and how they apply to Sweden — preliminary theorizing suggests that Sweden should militarize its entire economy, forbid foreign trade (though perhaps accept aid) and turn Barseback 2 Nuclear reactor into a bomb-making facility, lest the Danes or Norwegians revert to a Vikingist expansion mode. A historical tendency towards blatant parliamentarism would also have to be stamped out, preferably ruthlessly.

    The Vice Chair noted that several indigenous peoples in the region, such as the Sami, have long practiced a native form of self-reliance, perhaps even before Great Leader was born. Was this not Juche? And would not the Study of Sami Self-Reliance be the truly Juche way for Nordic peoples to Study the Juche Idea? The idea was debated for some time before it was declared erroneous, for is it not true that the Sami are in fact reliant on reindeer? Now what kind of Juche is that? Ha!

    ReportAre poodles running dogs?

    The Vice-Chair updated the cadre on his taxonomy of the animals that Dear Leader has identified as working for the imperialists. While it is clear to everyone that fat cats are capitalist, there has been some puzzlement as to why running dogs might be. Very few of Kungsholmen’s bourgeois dogs have been observed running, and none of those were poodles or lapdogs. Skansen zoo was all out of hyenas, so no progress there.

    The meeting was then adjourned. The next meeting was set for Great Leader’s birthday, April 15. Marx your calendars.

    Apple's soft Cell

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    Since everyone (OK, well, someone) is engaging in a bout of rank guessing about which companies are the rumoured suitors for the licensing of OS X on non-Apple boxes, I thought I’d join the funFrom Fortune Magazine: “Most tantalizing of all is scuttlebutt that three of the biggest PC makers are wooing Jobs to let them license OS X and adapt it to computers built around standard Intel chips. Why? They want to offer customers, many of whom are sick of the security problems that go with Windows and tired of waiting for Longhorn, an alternative.”:

    What will obviously happen is that Apple is going to license OS X to IBM so that Big Blue’s customers have the option to run OS X on the next generation Cell-based IBM corporate servers; and Apple is going to license OS X to Sony so that every Cell-based PlayStation 3 is simultaneously a Mac mini on steroids — running the non-game home-entertainment-hub part of the PlayStation’s many promised abilities. (Who knows, maybe Cell-based Macs will in turn run PlayStation games.)

    Notice how this strategy does not in the main cannibalize Apple’s own computer segments (this being the mistake Apple made last time it licensed an operating system)? By licensing to Sony, OS X shows up in far more households, and by licensing to IBM the whole corporate world finally opens up to Apple — at least to its OS, and thus later hopefully to its Xserve on the low end.

    Meanwhile, going to Intel chips is not worth the risk of compatibility headaches, especially as Cell looks amazing from where we are standing right now.

    As for who the third manufacturer might be, here is a clue: Three major companies are co-developing Cell.

    Döm and Dömber

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    Remember Åke Green, the backwater pastor who publicized an obsessively homophobic sermon in 2003, for which he was convicted to a month in prison by a regional court? That court had stringently applied a vaguely worded law that prohibits agitation against ethnic groups and homosexuals (hets mot folkgrupp) — that decision has now been overturned by an appeals courtBBC version of events.. I originally blogged him here and here. While there is no doubt that this is a victory for Åke Green, the prosecution has the right to appeal the verdict higher up the legal food chain, so the story is not over, though we are certainly in the next chapter.

    The verdict, in Swedish, is here, as a one-page PDFOK, this really pisses me off. Why is Göta Hovrätt using DRM technology to prevent me from copying and pasting bits from their PDF without me first plying the document with some secret password? What possible use does this restriction have? Surely legal verdicts are in the public domain, not copyrighted? I can view and manually retype the verdict but not command-C command-V — why?!. The reasoning behind the verdict, translated by me, follows below (because it’s important to read the whole thing):

    The purpose of criminalizing agitation (hets) against homosexuals is not to prevent discussions about homosexuality as such in churches or elsewhere in society. Nor are statements that judge homosexuals or expressions of disrespect automatically punishable by law. When it comes to sermons, the constitutional committee has declared that citing religious texts and merely encouraging listeners to follow these texts’ precepts does not normally constitute punishable conduct. However, the boundary between what is and what is not allowed is by no means clear, and in interpretations of the law even the European Convention must be taken into account. The conclusion here must be that only in rare cases should statements made in a sermon setting be deemed as hets mot folkgrupperPlease read along in Swedish on the DRM-protected PDF and suggest corrections to my translation..

    It is clear from the sermon and the pastor’s words that his main aim was to spread his literalist bible message. That which is apt to offend/insult/violate/injure (kränka) homosexuals in the pastor’s sermon is the bible-based categorical denunciation of homosexual relations as sin. His own addition, wherein he ties together citations, is not scientific and can, even if he has many reservations, be strongly questioned. The pastor’s exposition of these bible citations is notable for his choice of words, but their content is hardly more far-reaching than the bible texts he refers to. The right to preach a literal interpretation of the bible implies the ability to interpret and explain the bible in one’s own words, as long as the account is connected to the bible’s message. Even views that are foreign to the majority of citizens or even provocative may thus be expressed.

    There is nothing that indicates that the pastor used the sermon situation as a cover to attack homosexuals. The purpose of the sermon appears instead to have been to explain religious views and opinions which the pastor holds on bible texts and also to influence people’s way of life. Such conduct must be regarded as falling outside that which is punishable by law as hets mot folkgrupp.

    What a bizarre judgment this is. I think I like it even less than the first one. Whereas the original verdict declared that certain declarations by Åke Green in his sermon had no biblical foundation and were thus not protected by a constitution that protects the free interpretation of religious texts, this judgment seems to be saying that in fact the bible is a homophobic document and that thus Åke Green can’t be blamed for merely divulging its contents with some added vim and vigor. It’s as if the majority of the court held up their hands and said, “Hey, we can’t help it if the bible has homophobic passages, but if that’s what the constitution protects, so be it.”

    Both these verdicts, then, have themselves engaged in the interpretation of a religious text — deciding what the Biblical God did or didn’t think about homosexuals. The first verdict concluded that there is no basis in the bible for virulent homophobia, and the second concluded precisely the opposite, using it to acquit Åke Green.

    This is so unsatisfactory on so many levels. I have no religious beliefs myself, and certainly no beliefs that hold a text to be sacred; are my ethical opinions, when expressed, now less protected by the Swedish constitution than Åke Green’s, because they cannot find supporting evidence in a religious text? What makes religious belief more worthy of protection than my own sincerely held beliefs? Does this mean that Åke Green is allowed to say “I think homosexuals should be jailed” because it is his sincerely held religious belief, whereas if a garden-variety homophobe makes the exact same statement he is criminally liable because his convictions are not of Biblical/Koranic/Talmudic originWhat’s more, who gets to decide which texts are religious — the state or the believer? Does Dianetics count? The Book of Mormon? Falun Dafa’s Zhuan Falun??

    The verdict should have said that all speech expressing sincerely held beliefs (thus exluding perjury, libel, defamation and fraud) short of incitement to violence is protected. Period. Being convicted for hets mot folkrupp should imply violent action, or the ordering of violent action, or the verbal incitement of individuals to violent actions against a group. Åke Green is innocent not because he did such things in the name of religion; he is innocent because he did no such things, the origin of his beliefs being irrelevant.