Charlie's Caviar - A Very Swedish Taste

A reporter at the New York Times once described this Swedish delicacy like this: "Made from cod roe, it is squeezed out of what looks like a bright blue toothpaste tube and should not be confused with fine Russian caviar. Swedes love it, but for the rest of us, it can be hard to swallow, unless a salty and fishy pinkish goo appeals to you."

I use it on eggs, instead of salt, To be honest I use it on every kind of bread made by man just because it's so delicious. It is true, Swedes love it - whether we are 5 or 95 years old. We only seem to share this acquired taste with Norwegians and Finns, while the rest of the world frown or gag after tasting it. 

However, you really should try it, especially with eggs. If you don't live in Sweden, Norway or Finland, you can get it at any IKEA near you, or in specialized stores.

The following videos shows you how Kalles Kaviar was received in Los Angeles, Costa Rica and lastly by Swedish tourists in New York (where they complain about only getting two servings)

Karadzic Sent to the Slammer

Marlise Simon at the New York Times reports:

"Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, by a United Nations tribunal on Thursday for leading a campaign of terror against civilians that included the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 and the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Mr. Karadzic, 70, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted Mr. Karadzic of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre, which aimed to kill “every able-bodied male” in the town and systematically exterminate the Bosnian Muslim population there. The bodies were dumped in a mass grave.

(...) Mr. Karadzic was (also) convicted of persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer and murder in connection with a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces during the country’s 1992-95 civil war.

In addition, Mr. Karadzic was found to have been “instrumental” in a campaign of sniping and shelling that terrorized the civilian population of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. And he was convicted of leading the taking of United Nations employees as hostages, to obstruct NATO from carrying out airstrikes on behalf of besieged Bosnian Muslim civilians."

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It's great to see that one of the world's worst war criminals is condemned for the atrocities he has committed while he is still alive. Hopefully it will be a warning for a couple of other villains.

So one down, and hopefully Bashar Al Assad of Syria will follow soon.

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

I blame it on my brother Dej!

Try the New York Times quiz yourself! (Tipped by Joe Jervis@J.M.G.)

Say his name: MARK CARSON!

Mark Carson (32) did not hide that he was gay, and when he went out on the town he would often head to Greenwich Village, where years before he was born, much of the struggle for gay liberation unfolded. Yet late Friday night, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn, among the most important landmarks of that struggle, he was confronted with a man screaming anti-gay slurs, who then stalked him before pulling out a silver revolver and fatally shooting him, the police said.

“This clearly looks to be a hate crime,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference on Saturday. A suspect, later identified as Elliot Morales, 33, was arrested.

Mr. Kelly described a chaotic scene that involved a man seemingly out looking for trouble when he crossed paths with Mr. Carson and ended up shooting him in the face. (The New York Times) 

Customer Service

As proof that this blog is heterophilic I am now posting the iconic picture that is mentioned by my dear friend Diana in her comment on my earlier post "Just Because It´s Cute".

Hey, most of my family and best friends are heterosexually challenged, actually even my mother and father. I usually make sure to have at least three of the poor things at every party I throw.

I found this background story to the picture on the blog A History of Total Health.

"Edith (Shain) was a part-time nurse and student at New York University on the day President Harry Truman announced the Japanese had surrendered. She and a friend, at work in Manhattan at Doctors Hospital, took the subway to Times Square when they heard the news. Still wearing her nursing whites, Shain joined the crowd in expressing their impossible-to-describe exhilaration that the horrors of world war were over.

Amid the pandemonium, Edith was suddenly grabbed, embraced and passionately kissed by the unknown sailor who’d forgotten his manners in the heat of the moment. Alert photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt and naval photographer Lt. Victor Jorgenson seized the opportunity for the image of a lifetime. Jorgenson’s version was published the next day in the New York Times; Eisenstaedt’s shot appeared on Life magazine’s cover."

But it seems there are three women claiming to be the nurse in the picture as this article in the New York Times tells us, "When A Kiss Isn´t Just A Kiss".

Sven Analyzes "the Threshold"

Swedish virtual worlds blogger Sven Idyll over at Svens(k) Idyll has been thinking over Philip Rosedale´s statement to the New York Times recently and come up with this interesting analysis (rough translation by me) in his post "It becomes impossible only when you know it is"

"Philip Rosedale made a statement recently about the threshold of Second Life being high, and to some extent it is true, but one thing is absolutely critical, the willingness to learn and explore. I have in the past month seen how quickly primary school pupils will take on such a thing as building in virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Sim. They do not think it is particularly difficult - if they have the interest they learn extremely fast. Learning how it works is not the hardest part for them but to learn to utilize the many options that are available is difficult. Children do not see so many obstacles, but they try - and often several times. Sometimes, the impossible happens.

Children have not acquired the limitations that we have as adults. We as adults mean something else with "impossible" than children do. Impossible for us older people is a pretty solid stop but for the young, it is a condition that exists until someone finds a way. A few adults manage to keep this desire to conquer the impossible and I would have liked to be one of those but I have put up too many stop signs and signs for both "one way traffic" and "forbidden passage" in my mind.

If you could make a wish for new feature or something else new in Second Life would it be something that has a counterpart in real world, or you could come up with something completely new - something that can only exist in the virtual world? Some children just spurt out such ideas. We are well accustomed to some of those things, being able to teleport, fly and change our avatar anyway we wish - or so we think.

We have a whole new world waiting for us where everything is possible, but we just copy things from real world into virtual reality. When will things start coming in the virtual worlds that we can copy over to the real world? Lack of imagination is in short supply in the virtual worlds!

We want to come to the virtual world because it is different but when we get there we immediately start converting it to a copy of the world we want to disconnect from.

In how many areas of your life are you free from rules and patterns and have a belief that there are no limitations? If you have that, can you describe that which has no borders and that cannot be captured by rules or exhibit patterns?

Second Life needs pure imagination to grow but to let go of the rational thoughts completely and let your imagination reign free is probably the hardest things to do."

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I must say I agree with Sven, if a total gaming idiot like myself - and a few other fools I know all to well - could learn to enjoy SecondLife and develop our skills inworld by ourselves and with the eager help of our friends I do not really see where the huge threshold problem is. There is nothing "impossible" with SecondLife!

Sven is also correct in my mind when he calls for even more imagination in virtual worlds.

Challenges should not be easy, but they must be fun and interesting and allow us to develop in our own pace. Only then will the curiosity and childlike creativity be awakened that makes life so fun sometimes.

Model: Millimina Salamander

I am still waiting in vain for my fashion statement "The Jesters Hat - only for the boldest among fashionistas" to be copied into first life.

Foggy Monday

"Serenity in the fog", photography by Gary Hamburgh

It´s Monday and I didn't sleep well last night. All weekend my head was bursting with images of the things I was going to create now that I had finally started building again in SecondLife. I also had some splendid ideas about future posts for the blog.

I woke up this morning - 35 minutes too late - and all the enthusiasm was gone. Instead I have spent the whole day trying to catch up with myself and my first life after spending last week mostly in meetings or conferences.

Luckily nothing too bad had been going on so by the end of the day I had finally gotten through all the mail and caught up with everything else, so tomorrow I can start afresh without any immediate deadlines or crisis's needing to be averted.

When I got home I was tired but restless and uninspired and cold. I tried taking a nap to refresh myself but couldn't sleep, so I feel foggy, dazed and cold. More or less like the photo by Gary Hamburg but not as beautiful.

I have been rereading Philip Rosedale´s statements in The New York Times interview that have caused such an uproar among residents and trying to fit them to my realities.

Before entering into SecondLife I can honestly say that I could sometimes be alone, but that was never a problem for me because I never ever felt lonely. There were always people at hand if and when I wanted them. Now there are days that I feel lonely even if I am not alone, no matter how many people I am surrounded by.

Ars and the rest of my onetime SecondLife family seem to somehow have changed my perceptions. In the light of Philips words this makes me feel warped and abandoned. I don´t know if I am making any sense at all and may very well remove this post later.

Whatever, tomorrow is another day, anything can happen!