Danfoss Universe - open for business!

Yes, finally, we're open. It's been a frantic effort in the past weeks, but everything is pretty much ready and up & running. Yesterdays' grand opening featured The crown princess and princess + other assorted royaltyi and lots of Very VIPs. Having 2500 guests in the park wnt a lot more smoothly than we had expected.
For my part, I've been coordinating the website - here, take a look.

Climate change: now you see it

I happened to come across this amazing collection of very telling images which show glaciers retreating, snow melting, high tides etc. Climate change at it's most visible.

The ancient power of love

I've spent more time than ever in churches in recent months in preparation for our daughter's confirmation last weekend. It's nice - but ergonomically very uncomfortable - to sit there for an hour or so, singing the old psalms, listening to the amazing scriptures, hearing the priest preaching...
I am not babtized. I don't really feel a member, there's so much about the institution of the church that I have a hard time with. (E.g.the insistence on one, well defined God, the tendency to use God's forgiveness as an excuse for independent thinking and responsibility...)

Never the less, you cannot but marvel at the wisdom of the words of Paul in the first corinthian letter:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not selfseeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Steward Brand on environmental heresies

Steward Brand has changed my thinking fundamentally on several occasions. He has a knack for seeing major paradigm shifts just before they happen. So I listen when he raises his voice. This months Technology review features his article on environmental Hieresies. He argues that over the coming decade the environmental movement will completely reverse it's position on four issues that are currently no-no's: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
For me, the most controversial of those is nuclear power. I don't feel ready for nukes just yet.

I guess what it all comes down to is whether you believe that quantative growth is the only possible way forward. Should we charge ahead, fix the problems that may arise by applying ever more advanced technology - or should we back off a little, adopt an attitude of more with less, focusing on ressource effeciency. Of course the answer is to combine the two. Use the technology and science in a way that's in accord with the workings of the biosphere. Sounds easy. So: does nuclear power fit?

Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles

Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles - Robin Good's Latest News
This is an amazing collection of links to places online for free photos. And in general, a quite impressive site with information on publishing.

The glacier simulator - still unfrozen

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Things are starting to take shape in the park. We're opening may 5th, so speed is building up by the hour. Very intense period, good fun too, luckily.
We're installing a simulator of a glacier crevasse. It's a giant freezer that you pass through on your way to a room with a vibrating floor and a video display about calving glaciers. The cooling tubes are interwoven with fiberoptic cable. The cooling has not been turned on yet, so I'm looking forward to see it covered with ice. Any day now.

The price of gasoline

Just read that the average price of a gallon of regular gasolin in the US is $2.22. At my local gas station here in Denmark, 1 liter of regular gasoline is 9,34 Danish kroner.
So let’s do the math, assuming that the exchange rate between dollars and Danish kroner is 5,8 and that 1 gallon equals 3.78 liters:

Translated into Danish kroners, the american gasolin price is 3.41 Danish Kroner for one liter of gasoline.

Translated into dollars, the Danish price of gasoline is $ 1.61 pr. Liter, or $ 6.09 pr. Gallon.

The myth of our perfection

At times it seems to me that a lot of our closest friends are living very turbulent lives.So many of the people I love are really in very fragile or messy circumstances (of course they may think I am in messy circumstances – maybe I am, despite my feeling almost obscenely normal).
We get ill, we forget, we have bad habits, dark sides of our personality. We have weak spots, we have screwed up relationships, ghost in our past.
My point is: We’re all weird in some ways, we live messy lives, we all have aspects of our life that are on, or beyond, the edge of what’s generally, officially acceptable.
But we also live in this collective myth of human perfection. As professionals, in public, and certainly in the media, we carefully remove all signs of imperfection and weakness. Enough of this, and you end up believing perfection is normal and mess is the exception.
Some of my friends once had their home featured in Arcitectural Digest. I could barely recognize the place: dressed up with furniture brought in for the occasion, rooms with absolutely no mess, except for a few pittoresque touches of humanness.
A reportage of maybe 15 photos, each representing a 1/125 second slice of reality. I happen to know that there haven’t been many 1/125 seconds since then in which the place has looked like what was presented in the magazine.
The facade blocks the view. Maybe we can make our life look orderly for long enough to make a good impression – but we know that the cupboards are bursting with hidden mess – the real stuff.

If you need a hotel in Århus

I stay in a lot of hotels, but very rarely do they leave much of an impression, and if so it's usually for the things that don't work - like plumbing in British hotels. A few days ago I stayed at Hotel Guldsmeden in Århus, Denmark. It is used by the school of journalism for a lot of their guests and students.
This may sound a bit dramatic, but the place was a reminder of the importance of insisting on quality, beauty and kindness.
It's a three star hotel, not a high end place. The room I slept in was 995 kr, but they have cheaper rooms as well.
It had beautiful furniture, original art on the walls, it was absolutely clean, and there was free wifi access (such a positive gesture). Breakfeast was the best I've had in quite a while.
Anyway, it's hard to describe, but what made the difference was the sense that this was a very personal project - a project with the clear aim of making the stay nice for the guests.
(They have a new hotel in Copenhagen also. I'll have to try that out)
Now you know.

From a binary to a probabilistic paradigm

Heard a nice phrase in a speech by Clay shirky: We’re moving from a binary to a probabilistic way of doing things.
Indeed! As I see it, this is one of the main charateristics of the paradigm shift I’ve been trying to describe for years.

Clay Shirky used it to describe how our way of classifying information is changing as we move from physical to digital libraries. We no longer have to stick rigorously to official categories. Neither do have to make sure that each subject only belongs to one higher level category. In stead we can tag information in any number of ways, and let anyone participate in creating the tags. In fact the variance in how people classify a given document may only add to our understanding of it.

But moving from a binary to a probabilistic worldview applies much broader. It’s a general way of understanding reality that we have to learn.
We’ve been used to thinking that answers were certain, that truths were absolute, that conclusions were clear, that categories and facts were solid and objective.
But the new paradigm suggests that this is actually the exception. Most of the answers these days are not binary – a clear yes or no. Is it a good idea to invade Iraq, Is nuclear power bad, are we making progress? For the majority of questions you can only answer with a certain probability, and given certain contexts. One result of the spread of information is that we realize, that there are many truths and noone really knows very much for certain.

If I got really philosophical I would point out how this world view is represented even in basic physics – for instance, that you cannot know exactly where an electron is. You can only tell with a certain probability that it is at a particular location.

Culture is a process

Culture is a process. It’s continually evolving. Culture is not static. Culture is interaction, innovation, culture comes to life by being used and developed.
It’s obvious. Never the less there’s a very strong tendency to think that culture is motionless, something you should protect and never change. So keep away foreign influence, chant the old truths lest our precious national culture should become corrupted.

What’s on your i pod? You are.

It strikes me how much our devices are becoming mirrors of our selves. A look at the playlists and photos of an ipod is amazingly revealing of the owners personality. PC’s of course tell it all. Our lives flow through them in almost every aspect. It’s almost scary when you think about how much about you is in your computer. The police knows of course,”computer forensics” has become an important discipline.

Progress?

Steens oldsmobile
Originally uploaded by Peter Hesseldahl.

A Friend of ours just bought this mint condition Oldmobile 1959. It's an amazing artifact, getting inside feels like entering a time machine. The whole car oozes a completely different logic, a way different world view. It's BIG, it's got tail fins, massive use of chrome, everything is vast and heavy, including the enormous engine. The whole thing weighs in at 2400 kg.
Well, guess what: This happens to be exactly what the Porsche Cayenne SUV or the exceedingly popular VW Touareg weighs. But this is 2005 and our climate has gone haywire in the meantime! It's even worse here in Denmark, where the dealers have found a way of adding a few hundred extra kilos in order to make the Porsche get sufficiently heavy to be taxed like a truck (which happens to have a top speed of 266 km/h).
Sorry to spoil the party, but to me this is one of those totally perverted examples of absolute mindless consumption. A way of sending a very exact signal to everyone else on the road: I don't give a damn.

Folkeskolens formålsparagraf

More stuff in Danish:
Jeg snublede lige over Folkeskolens formålsparagraf. Ganske interessant læsnig i al sin poetisk - juridiske knaphed.
Jeg synes den er flot:

Undervisningsministeriets lovbekendtgørelse nr. 55 af 17. januar 1995
Folkeskolens formål

§ 1. Folkeskolens opgave er i samarbejde med forældrene at fremme elevernes tilegnelse af kundskaber, færdigheder, arbejdsmetoder og udtryksformer, der medvirker til den enkelte elevs alsidige personlige udvikling.

Stk. 2. Folkeskolen må søge at skabe sådanne rammer for oplevelse, virkelyst og fordybelse, at eleverne udvikler erkendelse, fantasi og lyst til at lære, således at de opnår tillid til egne muligheder og baggrund for at tage stilling og handle.

Stk. 3. Folkeskolen skal gøre eleverne fortrolige med dansk kultur og bidrage til deres forståelse for andre kulturer og for menneskets samspil med naturen. Skolen forbereder eleverne til medbestemmelse, medansvar, rettigheder og pligter i et samfund med frihed og folkestyre. Skolens undervisning og hele dagligliv må derfor bygge på åndsfrihed, ligeværd og demokrati.

Danish government searching for the experience economy

The Danish ministry of science and technology has had a think tank pondering the experience economy and what could be done to stimulate this aspect of industry and education. They just released a report with recommendations and a good general overview of the concept. It also has a good list of case stories. Pretty much what any regular reader of Business Week et. al. will have been confronted with - but put into a specifically Danish context, and with a focus on possible actions.
Sorry, it's all in Danish. You ought to learn that language.

What's wrong with this picture?

DSB tea
Originally uploaded by Peter Hesseldahl.

Well, it looks perfectly normal, it IS perfectly normal - and that's what's wrong.
I'm on a train, I ask for a cup of tea. So I get:

1 paper cup
1 tea bag
approx. 150 ml. Hot water
1 wooden stick to stirr
2 plastic container, sealed with aluminium foil, each containing 10 ml. Of low fat milk
1 plastic cup - to place the used tea bag in.
1 napkin

I hate it. I feel sad about it. Wasting the world for silly little things. Often I will simply not ask for anything, but as often I forget - and again I sit there with this pile of highly refined garbage. Certainly, I've tried FAR more consuming solutions to the problem of getting me a cup of tea or a bite to eat. It's out of proportions, but we've become blind to it.

TV debate on EU software patent directive

I participated in the Danish TV-program Deadline, commenting on the culture clash between those that want software patents and those that are opposed. I guess my main point was that if you're operating from a tradtional economic model it makes sense to seek to lock up the inventions you've invested to create. BUT; There's a completely different paradigm brewing, which feeds on some inherent characteristics of the networked, digital society. People are intereacting, building on each other's ideas, contributing, combining - the whole rip and mix thing - and it's my feeling that this will only become more prevalent, and it seems that this is where true new invention takes place. So by changing laws to give the established companies more protection, we weaken a very fertile common space of ideas - which in turn makes us all poorer.
Nothing original there, but it's hardly mainstream politics.
If you're Danish you might want to have a look.

De tavse tsunamier - radio

Det er godt nok længe siden jeg har lavet radio, men nu havde jeg lige muligheden for at lave et indslag til DRs Agenda med betragtninger og interviews fra UNDP konferencen i Paris om udvikling og bistand og FNs millenium development goals.
Indslaget varer omkring 17 minutter og starter ved 21.30.
Lyt til indslaget fra Danmarks Radio
Du kan også læse manuskriptet her i stedet.

Busking, with the blessing of authority

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Originally uploaded by Peter Hesseldahl.

In the London tube there are now "busking pitches", little areas designated to street musicians.
I've enjoyed endless hours playing with my old band on the streets of Europe - including the London underground. I always hated the part about feeling illegal, always prepared to run lest the police slap a fine on you.
A closer look at the fine print reveals that there's a consideable bureaucracy involved in this case. You can book the spot for two hours at a time, but before you can book, you have to send an application and show up at an audition. Part of the approval procedure involves turning over quite a bit of personal information, including any previous criminal records.
Not very useful for someone just passing through town - but still, overall it looks like progress to me. At least it's officialy acknowledged now.
Oh yeah, and of course the whole setup is sponsored by a local brewery.

Flower power

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Originally uploaded by Peter Hesseldahl.

Just spent the better part of two days at the annual "orchid festival" in London's Kew gardens photographing flowers together with my 13 year old daughter. What a great experience! The flowers are amazing, the whole botanical garden is an impressive testimony to the splendour of the British empire and victorian wealth.
And the best part of it is sharing the experience and a concentrated creative effort with Katrine.
Returning with about 500 shots, we should have plenty of stuff to rehearse our photoshop skills on.