Too much work

Right now I have a Hell of a lot of work to do. Basically I have 3 jobs:
1. Doing my old job, exploring for oil in Arctic waters (we're running two (too) big 3D seismic projects, to be completed by next summer).
2. Doing my new job in the research center (planning research projects for next year)
3. Teaching at the university (supervising PhD and MSc students and preparing a course I will teach next semester)
So, if you see that my blog posts get shorter and shorter, and I don't comment on all your great blogs, you know the reason ... but I'll be back >:)

Fags eat poop

A few days ago, I saw a documentary, on 60 Minutes, about the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. They run this website GodHatesAmerica, because America is a doomed country of fags and sodomists. The sodomists include anyone who has anything but simple straight (missionary) sex for the sole purpose of breeding. God probably hates Europe too. I can tell you it’s the same misery over here; fags and sodomists all over the place.

The Westboro Baptist Church has a collection of very creative posters and slogans, like "God is your enemy" and "God hates fags". The highlight is this one: "Fags eat poop". I think God appreciates that one. They probably found it somewhere in The Bible. Jesus is more tolerant. He might hang out with both sinners, tax collectors and poop-eaters.

I know 3 fags, and they are all very nice people. None of them eat poop. I think I should send a mail to the church and ask them to modify their slogan a little bit. Maybe something like "Fags eat poop, except 3 of them, at least".

Do you know any fags that don't eat poop? If you tell me how many, I can eventually add up the numbers and increase the total count, before I mail the baptist church >:)

Dear Cold As Heaven

Recently I got a mail, starting out like this:

Dear Cold As Heaven,

I would be honored if you’d take the time to review our product on your blog. In exchange for an unbiased review, We will provide a copy of the product for free! We will also place link to your review from our product's page with your logo.

The review may be written in any language you want ...

I thought maybe I could write a review in Fortran or Python >:)))

Just joking. This is the reply I sent:

Dear A####,

Thank you for your offer. I have, however, decided that I will keep my blog free from commercial reviews, ads and giveaways.

Best Wishes,
Cold As Heaven

In the picture you see the wave equation. That's how I make a living. I have everything I need, and a lot of crap I don't need. The blog is just a hobby, and I don't want to clutter it with ads and commercials.

Do you get mails asking for review of commercial products? How do you respond to that kind offers?

The captain from Venice

Here is the story about how the stockfish export to Italy from the outermost island up north started in the 15th century (read my last two posts). The RIB driver who took us out in the waves, told the story:

In 1432, an Italian nobleman, merchant and sea captain was on the way from Crete to Amsterdam in his trade ship. In the Atlantic ocean, they lost the course in a bad storm. The ship got damaged and the crew had to go in the lifeboats.

Weeks later, the lifeboat with the captain drifted in between the skerries in the archipelago north of the Arctic circle. They stranded on a small uninhabited island. Two weeks later, local fishermen in small boats found them, after observing the smoke from the campfire.

The fishermen brought the captain and the remnants of his crew to their village nearby. The captain stayed for four months, to recover from his strenuous voyage. The local priest served as translator (this was before the reformation, and the Bible was in Latin). He befriended the locals, and learnt to eat their stockfish.

When the captain returned to Venice, he brought some stockfish with him. The Venetians liked the fish, and a trade route was quickly established, to ship fish to Venice from the island in the north.

This story was transmitted orally from generation to generation, but on the mainland they believed it was just a legend. The captain had, however, written down his own version. His story had been forgotten, but in 1910 the manuscript was found in the Vatican library. The captains manuscript confirmed the oral transmittal.

Still today the entire stockfish production on the island goes to Italy.

Stockfish and rock

I just came back from the north. On the way south, the plane passed over a glacier, the second largest in Winterland. From the plane, I took a picture where you can see the crevasses in the glacier if you enlarge it.

Yesterday we were on a short geology field study along the beach. South and west of the island, there are potential oilfields under the sea floor. Therefore, it’s of interest to study the geology where it outcrops on dry land, to learn about what’s down there in the ground.

Yesterday we had a nice dinner, with dry cod prepared after the local recipe, served at the local bar. The cod is dried outdoor by the sun and the wind, without adding salt. This kind of dried fish is called stockfish.

All over the island there were racks made from logs. That’s where they hang the fish to dry it, for three months. Right now the racks are empty, since the fish has been taken down and shipped to Italy.

The stockfish export from this remote island to Venice in Italy, and how it all started in the 15th century, is interesting history. I’ll tell you the story later.

I am already missing the islands and mountains in the north. That’s why I’m listening to Mother North right now, a black metal classic by Satyricon. Here’s the link to the video on youtube: Mother North (video)

The video is somewhat controversial. If you don’t like that kind of stuff, you can listen to this cool version, live with the broadcasting orchestra: Mother North (live)

The outermost island

I'm back in the north, and basically in the middle of the ocean, on the outermost populated island in this big archipelago. A weird place for a geophysics conference. I've never been here before. It's a nice place. The island is remote and manage on their own. There are two flights to the mainland per day, and two ferry departures, with four hours transit across the sea.

The population is about 600 people. They export first-class dry-cod for 150.000 dollars per citizen per year, mostly to Italy. Unemployment is zero, it's a self-sustained community. They have 100 fishing boats, one taxi and one church.

Today the weather has been perfect. Sunny, but windy. It's always windy here. Before lunch we went on a boat ride, in a fast 30 foot RIB, out between the small islands and rocks near by, where only sheep, eagles, and half a million Atlantic puffins live. I took some pics of course.

After lunch, the conference started. My talk was the second last before dinner. I presented my new invention, on nonlinear waves, and got good feed back. Apparently no one noticed my somewhat original haircut. Or maybe they're just too polite to say anything.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be a geology field trip, but it may be cancelled. There is only one man who can drive the bus here, and he's on vacation in the south >:)))

Haircut

I cut my hair yesterday. I did it myself, as usual, with one of these electric hair cutters. I always cut it down to 4 millimeters (about 1/8 inch), and my old lady always gets annoyed because it’s too short.

Yesterday, she was mad.

OK, I’ll admit it; I did a small mistake. I was going to cut off a few hairs left behind, and forgot that I had taken off this little plastic thing that regulates the length. So I cut it down to basically zero. But only on a small spot near my forehead.

It was the worst haircut she had ever seen, and she refuses to be seen in public with me for the next four weeks, and she gets embarrassed just by thinking about me giving a presentation on the geophysics conference tomorrow. I laughed, and she said it was all due to my Tourette’s syndrome (she’s convinced I have Tourette, I wrote about it here ).

I tried to get her in a better mood by talking about the new stairs with the nice hand-rail that I’ve built, in front of our main entrance. She said this was the definitive proof of my Tourette, when I brought stairs and hand-rails into a discussion about hair-cuts.

I took a picture so you can judge yourself. It's not that bad, is it? Anyway, I don't care, and hair grows back >:)

Assumption of Mary

Have you ever been in a Catholic country on the 15th of August? I have, a few times, in Italy and Austria. Every time I have been surprised to find that all shops and restaurants are closed, at least in the small towns and villages. No place to get food.

The 15th of August is the day when the Catholics celebrate the Assumption of Virgin Mary, a national holiday. I come from a Protestant country so I always forget about it.

Jesus was apparently a nice guy, a very tolerant person, and a rebel of his time. And different from some of his fans, he probably just laughed when John Lennon announced that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Why not celebrate the Assumption of his dear mother? Have a nice trip >:)

I took the picture above this summer, in a small Medieval town in Montenegro. I don't think they're Catholics, probably some kind of Orthodox?

Blogging in Ramadan

There’s apparently something strange with Blogger right now. People are posting comments that don’t show up in the comments area of my blog (I get them in my mailbox).

Maybe it’s because of Friday 13th?

Or maybe it’s because of the Ramadan? You’re not allowed to blog or comment on blogs between sunrise and sunset; it's brain-food. This is probably God’s revenge over an atheist blogger. I post my favorite Mohammad cartoon here (there’s a link to all of them in the right margin). Maybe that will make Him happy >:)))

Third River

We hiked along the main river for about an hour, to the place where a stream comes in from the side. Some places the trail was wet and muddy. We jumped from rock to rock to keep our shoes dry. On the narrowest point, we crossed the stream on a bridge made from two logs close together, only a foot wide.

We went down to a pool under a high waterfall and started fishing. A big trout (as seen with kids’ eyes) was hooked on the first throw. After a couple of hours, we had thrown 3 small trout back to the river, and put 4 in the bag.

I guess you’ve got the point now? Where to get the easy catch. Yes, of course, it’s in a big pool, under a high waterfall, where the fish are waiting for food to pass by, and the waterfall is too high for the trout to jump up.

Second River

In the morning, we went up to an old cottage to dig for earthworm. That’s the bait that gives the easiest catch. With 40 earthworms in the box, and some soil on top to keep them alive, we were ready for fishing.

We hiked for ten minutes from the bridge were the gravel road crosses the river. By a pool under a big waterfall, we stopped and made the rods ready. Little boy and his even smaller cousin was fishing. I was watching from the background, clearing nots on the fishing line, and threading the worms on the hook.

The result, after a couple of hours of fishing, was 2 small trout thrown back into the river, 2 lost between the boulders and 6 in the bag. Then we gutted the fish. We cut them open from the hole under the tail where the poop comes out to the jaws, and pulled out the entrails. We studied the liver and heart and bowel, and determined the sex (looking for the caviar, as the kids say it). We got 2 girl-fish and 4 boy-fish.

It was a warm and sunny day. We stopped by the cabin and picked up our swimming shorts and towels and soap, and went down in the lake to swim and wash ourselves.

First River

We started from the trail head around noon, a long line of people walking on the trail; the boys, their cousins, uncles, and grandfather with his stick made from juniper. We hiked for an hour and a half, first through birch forest, then above timberline. The grandfather ran off on sidetracks to check out the cloudberries on some marshes that he is keeping an eye on.

On a place were we cross a small stream, we stopped by the canyon to eat lunch. We had a lunch package with 30 sandwiches and a bottle of concentrated black current syrup. Then we just add cold water from the stream before we drink it. All the time a golden-eagle couple was circling above us, screaming and complaining since we were close to their nest.

We climbed down in the canyon, to let the kids fish trout in the river, in a pool under a white waterfall. We were apparently the first people climb down this summer, as seen from the grass growing in the trench where we decent. After an hour, the kids had pulled 19 trout out of the water. The trout are still flipping for a long time after they’re dead. That’s why we load some rocks on, to avoid loosing the fish between the boulders.

To the mountains

I have been in the mountains for a few days, with the boys.

Early in August is the best time to go. Late in the summer the water in the lakes is often warm enough to go swimming. We can eat blueberries and cloudberries and black crowberries by the trail when we go hiking. The trout fishing in the rivers is very good.

Our mountain cabin is very simple; no electricity, no cell-phone, no tap water (we carry drinking water in buckets from the river), and no internet of course. I had no chance to post the stuff I wrote, on a sheet of paper, under a candle light at night. I'll type it in, and post it together with some nice pics from our fishing trips in the next few days >:)

The way kids see it

From time to time we’re taking the kids to major cities in Europe, to add new impressions to their cultural backpacks. We have been to London, Paris, Genova (where Columbus was born), to the ancient city of Pompeii … and this summer, we went to Venice.

We visited the famous San Marco Square, with the big cathedral, the Doge Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, and we travelled on the canals and around the archipelago with the public boat system (that's what they have instead of buses)

When we came back from the vacation, and the grandmother asked little boy about Venice, he didn't even mention the San Marco Cathedral or the Hieronymus Bosch paintings in the Doge Palace. Little boy replied: "I saw a dead rat floating in the canal" >:)

Celebrating Fifty

Wow! I have reached 50 followers on this blog. That's about ten times more than I ever expected to get. I don't in any way imagine that all those fifty nice people read every line and paragraph that I write, but thanks a lot to anyone who does.

Today I'm gonna celebrate with fireworks, and an outrageous drum solo on my blue drum kit ... I hope the neighbors will forgive me >:)

My neighbor is often playing piano, in the middle of the night and with windows open (in summer), so I guess I owe him something back >:)))