Fjordlandia Viking bar & kaffistove, main str. 221B, Needlehole

he's laughing Petty

Not convinced- you see bears and other captive animals displaying similar behaviour from being held captive- and Im not one for projecting human emotions onto animals just because it reminds us of something human.

laughing isn't just a human-emotion. rats laugh. dogs laugh. it's the sound they make when they fight only it is a "happy-signal" because it is also the sound the make when they play. and playing is training for real fights. therefore this playful laughter is also a signal of being the not dominate one (i couldn't remember the word). the fox is basically saying. "hello, you're huge and a bit scary, but i am really nice, see i am wagging my tale, putting my ears at the side and not looking directly at you". this is the sort of way a young dog or fox would great and elder, dominate one.

monkeys laugh. they laugh when they play and when they are frightened (look they're "smiling") and also when they fight. humans just aren't that animalistic anymore so the laughing and smiling is more commonly thought of as being happy and not agressive. in the animal world this has a double meaning. if a dogs shows it's teeth, it can be a calming signal but also an agressive signal.

Sometimes when reading articles in fjordian newspapers I end up looking like this  
This is an article about an egg production company that has started selling eggs in cartons like these:



The intention is to make children want to eat more eggs as it is healthy food and good for them and so on. But the author of the article is pissed off because the cartons "contribute to increasing gender differences", and says that they "have gone too far". Really?! Girls who like pirates will eat "pirate eggs" just as much as boys who like pirates will, and boys who like princesses will eat "princess eggs". People are just too well-off in Norway, where commentators spend hours of their work days writing bull***t articles like this one. Egg cartons, really?!=¤ ?)!`#%`!(#?%)(!#?=)%(?!=)#%(!?=)#%(?!=)#%(?=)!#%(?=#%(?=)!#

/rant over

Edit: apparently it's just some common consumer who's complained about this, but the rant stands as it goes for other journalists/commentators, and the author of the article should have hung up the minute she heard what the deal was about anyway

well, i agree it's not that necessary... bur srsly.. we have it waaay too good here. just look at the election.. jesus..

How is said election going, anyway?  Did you vote yet?

bur srsly.. we have it waaay too good here.- Norc

That a very, crabbit attitude!  Maybe your part Scots after all Norc.  

i vote yesterday. 

what i mean petty is that people have it so nice they start complaining about stuff that really isn't so bad. now they're not happy with the healthcare and etc. etc which they have no reason to be, yes it can be improved, but they want drastic changes. they want change just to change. it's stupid. we're facing a thatcher-ish era now and it is ridiculous.

we're facing a thatcher-ish era now- Norc

   Eru help you- vote, march, protest, do all you can within your power to prevent that Norc, we havent recovered from Thatcher even yet, and probably wont for generations.

Indeed we're living the good life here these days. Speaking of the election, here's some unexpected attention to the Norwegian election from The Lanclet:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2961680-3/fulltext?elsca1=ETOC-LANCET&elsca2=email&elsca3=E24A35F

Offline: Norway and September 9
Richard Horton

The most important election this year in global health is taking place on Sept 9. On that day, Norway goes to the polls to deliver its verdict on the Red-Green coalition led by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Red-Green because it is an alliance between Stoltenberg's Labour Party and the smaller Socialist Left and agrarian Centre Parties). If Stoltenberg loses, a reduction in Norway's overseas aid programme is likely, together with a downsizing of Norway's leadership role in global affairs. Norway's international footprint will become smaller and global health will, as a result, become substantially poorer. It is no exaggeration to say that Norway's national election will have a large international impact. Why is this so?

Under Prime Minister Stoltenberg, Norway has become an important leader—financially and politically—in global health. Although Norway is a small country of only 5 million people, its influence belies its size. In global health, Norway is a superpower. The largest contribution Norway has made to global health during the past two decades is the joint creation and support, with the Gates Foundation, of the GAVI Alliance. By the end of the 1990s, vaccination had fallen off the international development agenda. James Wolfensohn, then President of the World Bank, sought to correct this neglect by convening a Vaccine Summit in 1998. That meeting led to the creation of GAVI, with Norway's former Prime Minister and, at the time, Director-General of WHO, Gro Harlem Brundtland, appointed as GAVI's first Board Chair. Since 2000, Norway has contributed and pledged US$1466 million to GAVI, making it the third largest country donor after the UK and France. Norway's early involvement with GAVI overlapped with the first administration led by Stoltenberg in 2000—01. Norway's global leadership accelerated rapidly after his centre-left coalition was elected in 2005. The decisions Norway took then are examples of how a small country can use its relatively modest resources—material and diplomatic—to play an unexpectedly important part in foreign policy. Thanks to the work of a small group of advisers—two deserve special mention, Tore Godal and Sigrun Mogedal—the Stoltenberg government took up global health, especially MDGs 4 and 5, and began to shape international policy in ways that have had lasting value. Thanks to Stoltenberg's personal commitment, Ban Ki-moon's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, Every Woman, Every Child, became an issue for heads of state, not merely ministers of health or ministers of international development. Norway helped initiate important new work to catalyse progress towards MDG targets. The Commission on Information and Accountability has added new impetus to tracking results and resources for women's and children's health. The Commission on Life-Saving Commodities has prioritised delivery of 13 maternal, newborn, child, and reproductive health commodities to those most in need. Norway has also given US$580 million to the Global Fund. It led the 2007 Oslo ministerial declaration, putting global health at the forefront of foreign policy decision making. And under the leadership of Bjørn-Inge Larsen, Norway has been a vocal contributor to global policies on non-communicable diseases. In sum, Norway's global health legacy under the leadership of Jens Stoltenberg is his government's greatest political achievement. Those achievements may now be in jeopardy.

This is why Sept 9 is so important. Stoltenberg is standing again, but opinion polls predict his defeat. When he won a second term in 2009, Labour took 35% of the vote against the Conservatives' 17%. Today, Conservatives are projected to win 31% of the vote, against Labour's 29%. It is quite possible that Conservatives will form a coalition with the right-wing nationalist and libertarian Progress Party (creating a Blue-Blue coalition). This could prove to be the worst possible outcome for Norway's position in global health. What prospects are there to protect Norway's future role? If Labour loses, as seems likely, Jens Stoltenberg will probably step down as party leader. (Stoltenberg's talents deserve to be used in a senior international capacity, as were Brundtland's.) But who could take his place? There is one man. Someone with global health experience (he was chief of staff to Brundtland at WHO). And someone who was a successful Minister of Foreign Affairs and who is currently Minister of Health and Care Services. His name? Jonas Gahr Støre.

Just shows what small countries can contribute to the global community.

But is the shift to the right in your country Ringdrotten down to anything in particular.
Comparatively to the rest of europe your economy seems to be doing better than most an you have a massive oil fund to draw on to weather you through the hard times if needed, your health and education systems are rightly envied by many and seen as models to follow, especially when it comes to childcare- so whats causing it?

Our education systems may be good enough, but results from the last few years have been poorer than expected and hoped, and the number of students who drop out after tenth grade is alarmingly high. And our health care system is great and I'm a big fan of it, but for some treatments and operations there are long queues, something which the right wing parties have made a big deal out of. What they don't mention is that the moment you get a date for treatment you are automatically "queued", so there's a big difference in the numbers of people who wait in line for treatment or operations they need and people who just wait for their appointment, so to speak. There's also much talk about unworthy conditions for the elderly and long queues for care homes, and there's a lot of truth in this. And the health care workers are woefully underpaid.

Our oil fund (or the pension fund) is also a hot topic - how to spend it, where do we invest, how much do we use each year, how much outside our borders, how much on roads and so on. The budgetary rule plays a large part in determining this, a rule on which most parties agree, except one of the two big right wing parties. Taxes of different sorts are also a major topic, and also to what extent private actors should be allowed to run things that are now run by the state. Immigration policy has traditionally been a hot topic as well, but strangely enough it hasn't been discussed much during the pre-election period. The thing is, though, that the biggest party on both sides are so much alike to each other, that in order to find out what kind of policy we can expect the next four years we'll have to wait till we see what coalition emerges after the election. We know what parties we'll see in government if the lefties win (highly unlikely), but what sort of government we'll see if the blue guys win is more uncertain, and the policy we'll see will really depend on what parties end up in the high seat.

All these topics may sound like the big topics they are in every country's politics, but the questions being discussed within them are perhaps not quite the really big questions anymore - we've reached a high level of welfare and wealth, and it seems now that the politicians are fine tuning everything in order to stay in work.

cool. article. don't for the love of God vote FrP ..

It is very fitting that 'Jonas Gahr Støre' is followed by a picture of Clint Eastwood.

What causing it... I am not to well versed in politics, but even if you are doing well you always want more and better. Our roads are crap, for one thing. There's long waiting lists for operations. Local hospitals get too little funding and can't afford keep their staff and become nearly useless. Is privatizing everything the magical solution or is it the beginning of the end?

Taxes, health, school, immigration, roads and transportation...

OH lots of post while I was herding the kids to bed... oh well. *prepares to read*

Amarië wrote:It is very fitting that 'Jonas Gahr Støre' is followed by a picture of Clint Eastwood.

Didn'r realize it, but it looks very fitting indeed

Waiting times is an inherent problem it seems with national health care- and its easy to see why -it will always prioritize those most immediately in need of treatment- but that doesnt stop it being hugely annoying and inconvenient to the person who has a minor, but still bloody annoying, inconvenient or painful ailment.


how to spend it, where do we invest, how much do we use each year..- Ringdrotten

Those arent bad questions to be in a position to ask! I wish we were in that position.


"Taxes, health, school, immigration, roads and transportation..."- Amarie

Thats pretty much exactly the hot topics here in the UK too- in Scotland and in all the other parts of the UK.
Given privitisation is the way the English NHS has been going under the tories I wouldnt recommend it going on the results there so far.  

not to mention all the blue parties that are talking about going into coalition doesn't agree on a single thing, they don't give a rats ass about climate-politics and want to shut all immigrants into closed off spaces, prisons really. 


AND! on top of it all! they want the olympics in oslo 2022!!! AND THE FUCKING REST OF THE COUNTRY CAN'T VOTE YES OR NO, ONLY PEOPLE IN OSLO CAN! i don't want a handful of nitwits deciding where my tax money goes, when obviously they need to go somewhere else. health, education etc. etc. the people wanting olympics are old people, right wing people, stupid students with daddy-money and hotel-owners who wants to fill up their hotels. what about small sports? not to mention that when tromsø wanted it (still against it) it was just hushed down and generally a sour tone, but when oslo wants it  for fucks sakes!! it's bloody oslo-centric and it is ridiculous!

Gahr Støre for prime minister.

i think the change comes because we have gotten so used to having what we have, that we've forgotten. now we complain about little things (compared to what we have already accomplised) like alcohol prizes, taxes, roads etc.etc. so we want change, we're sick of the labour party, hell i am, but rather them than Frp and the right wing people.

that and Siv Jensen is a fucking good talker. 


and Ringo, i forgot, but very well put, that looong text  as i had written it myself ^^ 
just out of curiosity, ofcourse u don't have to answer, who're u cheering for?

Norc wrote:

i think the change comes because we have gotten so used to having what we have, that we've forgotten. now we complain about little things (compared to what we have already accomplised) like alcohol prizes, taxes, roads etc.etc. so we want change, we're sick of the labour party, hell i am, but rather them than Frp and the right wing people.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. As to whom I'm cheering for - "Gahr Støre for prime minister" - why not, I say

i like him. he's a good talker and he can say alot with few words  and he looks cool  i saw him in that health debate from Tromsø. that was cool.

I voted today and nearly did an enee menee miny moe to decide. I am still not entirely convinced.

Seems we will get Erna Solberg as prime minister. Change is good, I hope.

Yes, one can only hope I don't think we'll see the really big changes either way, leastways not in the first four years. It'll be interesting to see what we get. My biggest fear is Per Sandberg in any sort of power position - the guy's an ass and an idiot.

Sigbjørn Johnsen... They should keep him around, he has such a soothing voice and cute dialect. He could declare nuclear war against Sweden and we'd all nod and smile and feel it makes perfect sense.

yes.. agree, Per Sandberg is.. yeah.

i dunno, i kinda wanted change, but i dunno anymore. i feel it's gonna be chaotic with FrP and Høyre.. i mean.. they don't seem to be agreeing on much.. i dunno  but it looks like we're getting a female prime minister ..